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The Significance of Human Agonies in August Strindberg's

A Dream Play Ghassan Awad Ibrahim

Asst. Instructor

Department of English

Al-Turath University College

ABSTRACT This research paper deals with August Strindberg's treatment of humanity's

suffering by depending on the art of expressionism in which the author uses symbols

and exaggeration to reveal emotions, rather than representing physical reality through

showing various samples of tortured people from the community where they live and

suffer great pain and discomfort.

Strindberg's A Dream Play is written for the improvement of human beings'

conditions when it firmly tries to make people go back to spiritual values rather than

materialistic possessions to achieve happiness in life.

August Strindberg (1849-1912) is a Swedish playwright,

novelist, poet, essayist, and painter, born in Stockholm of Carl

Oscar Strindberg, a shipping agent, and his former maid-servant

Eleonora Ulrika Norling. Strindberg had an unfortunate childhood.

He was the fourth child, out of more than ten others. His father

went bankrupt when he was only four, and his mother died when he

was thirteen. In his autobiographical novel The Son of a Servant

(1913), Strindberg explained that his childhood was afflicted by

"emotional insecurity, poverty, religious fanaticism and neglect."1

Moreover, he failed in his university and could not realize his wish

to be a successful player, but he did not despair and subsequently he

became a journalist, a tutor, and a librarian; and one week after

publishing his first volume of short stories, Getting Married, on

September, 27, 1884, Strindberg was prosecuted for "blasphemy

against God or mockery of God's word or sacrament"2

Despite his hardships Strindberg had married three times,

but none of his marriages was a success since all of them were ended

in divorce. He is, unlike Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906); he is against

woman's emancipation because he believes that woman's duty is no

more than a wife and a mother. In his preface to Miss Julie (1888),

Strindberg shows a great hostility to the women of his time as he

states that "the half-woman is a type coming more and more into

prominence, selling herself nowadays for power, decorations,

distinctions, diplomas, as formerly for money, and the type indicates

degeneration",3

by saying these words, Strindberg gives an

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indication that he is an anti-feminist, a woman-hater, and a

misogynist who shows a strong dislike of women. That is why he is

exposed to be detested and criticized by some people who advocate

the emancipation of women. Many critics publicly express disgust at

Strindberg's much hatred to women and criticize at the same time

some critics who do not regard him as a misogynist:

I dislike August Strindberg’s work, though

I reluctantly acknowledge its seminal impact

on the formation of modern theater.

(I vastly prefer Chekhov and Ibsen, his fellow

pioneers.) It’s hard to warm up to a playwright

who hates women as much as Strindberg does,

especially since that’s usually what he’s writing

about. I am un persuaded by the critics who argue

that he’s not a misogynist because the men in his

plays behave just as badly as women.4

Furthermore, Strindberg's family members are not excluded

from his open misogyny of women when he candidly expresses his

own feelings of hatred towards not only his wife, but the rest of his

family female members, including his mother, sister and daughter,

regarding women as the real enemy of man as he at the same time

gives the reasons that stand behind his loathing for them in his

masterpiece the Father (1887) which assumes an entire warfare

between men and women as he explains through the mouth of his

male character, the Captain, the real aggressive emotions of his

household towards him, indicating that every woman in the world is

either adulterous or treacherous, and, thus she is, according to

Strindberg, the natural enemy of man:

My mother did not want me to come into

The world because my birth would give

her pain. She was my enemy. She robbed

my embryo of nourishment, so I was born

incomplete. My sister was my enemy when

she made me knuckle under to her. The first

woman I took in my arms was my enemy.

She gave me ten years of sickness in return

for the love I gave her. When my daughter

had to choose between you and me, she

became my enemy. And you, you, my wife,

have been my mortal enemy, for you have

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not let go until there is no life left in me.

According to Strindberg's speech aforementioned above, one

can easily realize that Strindberg's much hostility to women does

not only stem from his agony due to his tragic experiments with his

evil ex-wives but it has a root in his household. Apparently,

Strindberg has been psychologically abused by all his familial

surroundings. As a result of his miserable life, Strindberg is

threatened with personal neurosis to the extent that he imagined

witches attempting to murder him.6

Besides, during the last decade

of the nineteenth century he spent a significant time abroad and

engaged in scientific experiments and studies of the occult which

resulted in a series of psychotic attacks against him exactly between

the years 1894 to 1896 that lead to his hospitalization. After being

recovered from his mental crisis, Strindberg returns to Sweden and

writes his novel Inferno7which is an autobiographical novel written

in French during the years (1896-97) at the height of Strindberg's

troubles with both censors and

women. The novel is dealt with Strindberg's life both in and after

living in Paris, investigating his various obsessions, including

alchemy and occultism, and showing signs of paranoia and

neuroticism.

In fact, Inferno has often been cited as a proof of

Strindberg's own personal neuroses, such as a persecution complex,

but evidence also suggests that though Strindberg experiences mild

neurotic symptoms both invented and exaggerated much of the

material in the book is made for dramatic effects.8

In Miss Julie (1888), which is written a year after the Father,

Strindberg seems to have got a great deal of control not only on

himself but also over his material since "The play is a decided

advance in objectivity, generally free from the author's paranoiac

symptoms" as Robert Brustein remarks in an essay.9 The idea of

women being somewhat of a "monster" is still to accompany

Strindberg as shown through the character of Julie in the play,

indicating Strindberg's permanent abhorrence to women. But, it is

significant to mention that the play appears to mark something of a

turning point in Strindberg's view towards the triumph of both

sexes (male and female). Though the subject matter of the play is

still the mortal struggle of the sexes, apparently the play proves the

domination of men over women on the contrary of his former plays

such as the Father whose hero (The Captain) is the victim of the

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heroine (Laura). In Miss Julie, the male character (Jean) conquers,

and the female (Julie), who carries the title, goes down to

destruction or as Robert Brustein puts it when he says that "The

dramatic design of Miss Julie is like two intersecting lines going in

opposite directions: Jean reaches up and Julie falls down."10

Moreover, the play is underscored by social contradictory images of

rising and falling, cleanliness and dirt, life and death that form the

entire play which at the same time is unified by the contrasted

poetic metaphor which is the recurrent dreams of Julie and Jean:

"In Julie's dream, she is looking down from the height of a great

pillar, anxious to fall to the dirt beneath, yet aware that the fall

would mean her death; in Jean's, he is lying on the ground beneath

a great tree, anxious to pull himself up from the dirt to a golden nest

above. "11

However, Strindberg's misogyny was the central cause of the

many psychotic episodes he suffered throughout the last decade of

the 19th

century, episodes that put an end to his dramatic production

altogether in which he began to feel a more sympathetic view of

women. Actually, Strindberg himself was aware of his misogyny,

explaining that it was "only

the reverse side of my fearful attraction towards the other sex."12

Apparently, Strindberg does not only have two different views of

love and hatred towards women but he is also changeable for "he

was always attracted to women he could love for their maternal

qualities and hate for their masculinity, reacting to them with

bewildering changeability"13

This is the very thing which is

confirmed by his third wife, Harriet Bosse, as she sympathetically

analyses Strindberg's personality concerning his behavior towards

his wives, saying "I have a feeling that Strindberg reveled in

meeting with opposition. One moment his wife had to be an angel.

The next the very opposite. He was as changeable as a chameleon."14

In fact, he hates emancipated females whom "he detested for their

masculinity, infidelity, competitiveness, and unmaternal attitudes,"

15 and he loves at the same time "more motherly women (generally

sexless) - such as Mamma Uhl, his mother in law, and the Mother

Superior of the hospital of St. Loius"16

towards whom he feels great

love and admiration for their humanity and kindness.

Strindberg is a prolific writer who often depicts directly his

personal experience. He wrote over 60 plays and more than 30

works of autobiography, fiction, history, culture analysis, and

politics. His early dramatic works were considered naturalistic, the

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best examples of which are already mentioned above like The Father

and Miss Julie.17

Furthermore, his plays are full of psychological

realism in which he analyzed marriage and the war of the sexes in

more depth than any playwright had done before. He also writes

symbolic plays such as Dance of Death (1900) and Easter (1901), and

in his final years, a series of one-act plays such as The Ghost

Sonata(1907).

Strindberg has a great influence on the twentieth century

theatre. Although hailed as a naturalist in his lifetime, it is his

symbolic plays and his formal experimentations that have been most

influential, notably his influence can be seen on many later famous

writers such as Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Sean O’Casey,

Harold Pinter, Max Reinhardt, Tennessee Williams, and especially

his greatest disciple in America Eugene O'Neill (1888 – 1953), whose

life mostly paralleled that of Strindberg's.

Moreover, Strindberg is known as one of the fathers of

modern theatre. His works fall into two major literary movements,

Naturalism and Expressionism.18

Naturalism is the idea or belief

that only natural (as

opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the

world,19

while Expressionism is a modernist art or movement in

drama and theatre that emerges in Germany around 1910 and later

in the United States.20

It expresses man's views over the inner

meaning of life or a character to reveal the conflict inside human

minds. The first Germanic expressionistic drama is The Son (1914)

written by the German playwright Walter Hasenclever. Other

famous German expressionistic dramatists are Ernst Toller (1893-

1939) in his widely-known plays Man and the Masses (1921) and The

Machine Wreckers (1922) and Georg Kaiser (1878-1945) in his play

From Morn to Midnight (1918).

On the other hand, expressionism had its origin in Germany;

it left its influence not only over Europe, but also on America where

its impact is felt in such plays as Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine

(1923) and Eugene O'Neil's The Hairy Ape (1922).

Expressionism is the most significant rebellion against realism

in which things and people are presented for example in paintings,

stories, or films in a way that is like real life since expressionism is

meant to reveal man's internal conflicts going on in his mind by

using symbols and exaggeration to represent emotions, rather than

representing physical reality. Expressionists sometimes give these

inner conflicts human forms or symbols so that they can be seen,

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heard or watched easily as is the case in O'Neil's The Emperor Jones

(1921) when the reverberation of Negro's heart beats is echoed by

offstage drumming. Furthermore, the characters in most cases are

not given individual names but only professional, social or familial

ones. Besides they are usually given asides and monologues and at

the same time they are more types and individuals and their

language is sometimes disconnected and telegraphic.

A good example of expressionistic plays is Strindberg's

masterpiece A Dream Play which is the subject matter of this

research paper, written in 1902 and first performed in Stockholm in

1907. Having been abandoned by his wife, Strindberg wrote the play

in the midst of his mental breakdown, dubbing the play "the child of

my greatest pain."21

In fact, Strindberg suffers a lot during that

time when he became extremely paranoid, believing that witches

were attempting to murder him.22

However, Strindberg is the first major modern Swedish

dramatist who is globally famous. Before his death, Strindberg was

honoured by his people when scores of them made a torchlight

procession and speeches because his good attitudes towards the poor

and the oppressed people that he was always defending. However,

sickness keeps attacking the health of Strindberg who suffered a lot

throughout his lifetime. During Christmas 1911, Strindberg was

infected with pneumonia and he never recovered. Meanwhile, he

also started to suffer from a stomach disease, presumably cancer.

Sicknesses do not leave him until he died on May 14, 1912 at the age

of 63. Strindberg was buried in Stockholm, and thousands of people

attended his funeral.23

Olof Lagercrantz, who is one of his

biographers praises the acumen and the convincing style of

Strindberg, saying that his "talent to make us believe what he wants

us to believe" and his unwillingness to accept any characterization

of his person. 24

Many others of Strindberg's works are expressionistic such as

The Road To Damascus (1898-1901), The Ghost Sonata (1907), and

his last play The Great Highway (1909) of which are more precisely

described by Strindberg himself as "dream plays" for "they are

alike in their use of free form, so close to the form of a dream, and in

their languid abstractness: locations are vague; space is relative;

chronological time is broken; and characters possess names like the

Stranger, the Student, the Poet, the Hunter, and the Dreamer"25

as

Robert Brustein puts it. In fact, Strindberg believes too much in

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dreams since once he says "I dream, therefore I exist."26

However,

the dream plays use dream sequences and it is something natural to

see characters dreaming about things they would like them to

happen. It is important to mention that expressionists oppose

industrialism, thinking that it reduces man to "machine like

creature" because man is the main concern of the expressionists'

interest and it is he who is responsible for his problems that he can

change the world if he sets himself free from his self-enslavement, or

as Oscar G. Brockett points out that:

Man is always the center of the

expressionist's interest. He is seen

as being capable of nobility and as

a creature who strives for greatness.

But industrialism and science have

Kept man's eyes on the ground and

have reduced him to machine like

creature through the ideals of mass

production and conformity of behavior.27

Thus, it is clear that the aim of the expressionism as a revolutionary

movement is social reformation and change. In writing his dream

plays, Strindberg would seem to be the most revolutionary spirit in

the theatre of revolt in which he strives hardly for reforming and

changing man. But actually neither reformation nor change can be

felt tangible unless man himself is eager and desirous to do so since

they emerge from man himself. If man does not help himself there

will be no one to help him. Unfortunately, the expressionistic

glorification of man lost its effect after World War I, as this terrible

war showed man's selfishness and destructive motives more than his

spiritual and humanitarian achievements.

In his A Dream Play, Strindberg confirms the idea, as the title

suggests, of the dream-like life where people indulge themselves in

dreams, imaginations and speculations, forgetting time and place

where events of different times and places are mixed together.

Besides, the dream plays involve transformations of plot as well as

character as Strindberg wrote about A Dream Play and The Road to

Damascus (1898-1901):

The Author has sought to imitate the

Disconnected but apparently logical

form of a dream. Anything can happen;

everything is possible and plausible.

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Time and space do not exist. Upon an

insignificant background of real life

events the imagination spins and weaves

new patterns; a blend of memories,

experiences, pure inventions, absurdities,

and improvisations.28

Furthermore, according to Strindberg's belief that "the dream

is usually painful, less frequently cheerful ... and ... tormenting,"29

there will be no character in the play that is able to take some

comfort from its dream which it might be no more than a nightmare

which is usually harmful rather than pleasant that causes a lot of

trouble to the dreamer himself and "yet beyond them all lies the

dreamer himself, seeing evil come of the incorporation of the pure

intelligence in fleshly forms,"30

as Allardyce Nicoll remarks.

It is a matter of fact that when some people are, for example,

in agony, sadness, and misery they unconsciously escape into

dreams or deliberately into daydreams of things they would like to

happen, but unfortunately in A Dream Play the characters who are

keen to see their dreams achieved they finally realize that all their

dreams go in vain, obliging spectators to feel a sudden tender pity

for them since their life is really miserable and they are really in a

bad need for kindness and compassion. Those tortured figures

represented by the characters are real images of life to oblige

indirectly not only spectators but also Strindberg's chief character

in the play, The Daughter, the child of the god Indra, to feel

depressed about them and express sorrow over their distresses after

experiencing their agonies. It seems that Strindberg wants to say

that even the heavens offer a shoulder to cry on people's miserable

life when The god Indra listens sympathetically to the wail of human

voices rising from below, pushing him as a creator and ruler of the

world to send his daughter through the foul vapours to make sure if

human lamentation and agony are justified. Strindberg makes

Indra's daughter live among people so that she can practice the

happiness and sadness of their life and endure the agonies of their

existence until she puts off her mortal flesh and returns to her

father. By using supernatural forces represented by the female

Indra, apparently, Strindberg wants to present his common theme

of war of the sexes from the woman's point of view.

On earth, Indra's daughter is incarnated as a beautiful and

mature girl. She meets and marries a poor lawyer, who spends his

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life to no avail but trying to advise people in righting their wrongs.

After experiencing people's real anguish, the descending goddess

feels the trauma of the people severe living on earth and that is why

she prays to God to listen to people's sufferings and help them when

she says "Eternal God, hear them! Life is evil! Human beings are to

be pitied" (p.53).

As a result, one can discern that the play does not only present

earthly characters but also mythological ones such as the daughter

of Indra who confirms that mankind's life is evil and man suffers a

lot in this mortal world, and therefore, the critic Raymond Williams

describes the play, saying it "is based on the familiar idea of the

Goddess who descends to earth to discover the truth about the

suffering of mankind."31

Moreover, after experiencing both joys and woes of mankind

in this mortal world, Indra's daughter finds out that the world

scourges all people from all walks of life. She experiences the

domestic life when she gets married to a lawyer. She begins to suffer

as she is torn between the familial duties and her private life.

The Lawyer suffers when he tries hardly to defend the poor

and after that his suffering begins to escalate when he denies his law

degree and is misguided by the four faculties; philosophy, medicine,

law, and theology. His wife has realized the sufferings of her

husband, trying to soothe him by telling him that life is an illusion.

In this play, Strindberg presents real disgusting images of different

kinds of human miserable conditions, including domestic life, when

he gives us a good example of the humble and the old small house of

the lawyer and his wife (Indra's daughter) when Kristin, the maid,

keeps pasting up cracks on the walls and windows to prevent the

bitterly cold air from entering the house so that she can keep it

warm. This action makes the daughter very upset that she feels

choked and makes at the same time the lawyer satisfied as he thinks

that pasting is economical and costs nothing because he cannot

afford heating due to his poverty.

Kristin: I paste! I paste!

Daughter: (pale and worn, is sitting by the stove): You're shutting

out the air! I'm suffocating! ...

Kristin: Now there's only one little crack left!

Daughter: Air, air! I can't breathe!

Kristin: I paste! I paste!

Lawyer: That's right, Kristin! Heat is expensive!

Daughter: It's as if you were gluing my mouth shut (p.41)

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According to the episode just mentioned above, Strindberg confirms

that the happiness of a person, represented by the lawyer, is the

torture of another, represented by the daughter "the one's pleasure,

the other's pain" (p.44).

Generally speaking, any newly-married couple in the world

wish to have a baby to fill their life with happiness but even when

the wife and her husband have a baby they suffer especially the

lawyer who expresses sorrow over the existence of their newly-born

baby when he says that "his crying frightens my clients away"

(p.41). Moreover, the sufferings of the

married couple are not only because of their infant but also because

of their house which is small and they have not enough money to

buy a larger one so that they can have more space. Furthermore, the

couple's suffering continue to include their personal preference for

food as each one of them has his own keen sense of taste as the

husband likes cabbages, his wife hates them. She likes fish while he

hates them and then she wants a flower but he prefers food to it.

The couple's ongoing disagreements do not stop on that but

they continue to contain their conflicts about furniture since each

one of them has his own view about it. The escalating problems

between the two persons make the wife a deeply nervous woman

and these problems have too much affected her view about

marriage, pushing her to have an extremely strong feeling of dislike

for marriage as she says "It's terribly hard to be married ... it's

harder than anything else" (p.43). Besides she expresses her own

real feelings towards her husband when she reveals that "I think

I'm beginning to hate you" (p.43).

Strindberg's play is full of human sufferings, as man suffers

despite his attempts to achieve progress throughout his life.

Everyone in the play suffers not only do the couple suffer in the

play, but also all the other characters. The miserable life also

torments The Officer, another character in the play, who is not only

tortured by his unhappy childhood memories but also by the

humiliation of his current job when his position is degraded to a

groom whose job is to look after the horses in a stable and to keep

them clean. He also suffers as he is "unfairly punished for taking a

coin that was later found" (p.26). The officer dreams of reliving his

past love relationship with his absent beloved if she comes so that he

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can relieve much of his mental pain and her existence near him may

help in enduring the difficulties of his miserable life. Thus he resorts

to keep waiting for her for a long time to come but his efforts are

useless since his sweetheart never showed up.

The officer's current sufferings are mixed with the

psychological negative effects of his childhood bad memories due to

the loss of time and space in this play. In other words, the Officer's

physical great pain is

mingled with his inward agony that makes him a very grievous man,

especially when he frequently remembers, for example, his

schoolmaster carrying his horrible cane as a threat and asking

him:"Well, my boy, can you tell me how much two times two is"

(p.55)? Or when he remembers the everlasting conflict between his

father and mother whom is always insulted by his father as she

once, for example, wanted to do something "nice" to Lina, the maid,

by giving her mantilla; her husband was extremely raged due to her

action, considering it "ugly" as he claimed that it was a present

from him. Being kind, the Officer's mother suffers as she explains

that "when you do something nice, there's always someone to whom

it's ugly. ... If you do something good for someone, you hurt someone

else" (p.27). Lina, the maid, herself also suffers from hunger

and beating though she has five children. She is mistreated and is no

longer young and pretty.

As a matter of fact, when someone is in agony, he thinks of

changing himself for the better, but in the case of the Officer who

leaves the castle, where he works, so that he can get a sigh of relief

by going to the land of summer (Fairhaven) with the Daughter, he

again suffers because instead of reaching their impending

destination, the (Fairhaven), they by mistake reach Foulstrand, an

ugly place where sick people live in a quarantine station.

Another image of miserable life is presented in the play in

which He and She are in love but they are made miserable when

their boat is driven from Fairhaven to Foulstrand mentioned above,

and as a result they have been through the trauma of the squalid

current place (Foulstrand) for forty days. No one feels at ease in the

play, the Old Fop (Don Juan) who is made really depressed as he is

in a wheelchair and still in love with the sixty-year old Coquette who

is faithless since she is in love with another man. This episode

revives the Officer's old wound as it reminds him of his old love

Victoria who doesn't care about him, leaving him waiting for her for

a long time and she never appeared. The Pensioner, another

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character in the play, becomes a useless man as he retired at the age

of fifty-four. His early retirement comes as a severe blow to him

since he expects to live twenty-five more years. Being a pensioner, he

is made to do nothing except waiting for food and newspaper daily

until death comes to relieve him from his misery. The Billposter

suffers because he does not get what he really wants. He waits for a

long time to get the dip green colour net but "it wasn't just what I'd

wanted, so I didn't enjoy it so much" (p.33). The doorkeeper

suffers because she wastes thirty years of her age waiting for her

fiancé to come but he never showed up. Thus in her old age she is

unhappy since she

is no longer the most favourite dancer in the ballet and finally she

quits dancing.

Strindberg successfully depicts the meaninglessness of life as

his play reflects the real human critical conditions when some of his

characters do no nothing to solve their problems but dreaming or

waiting for someone who may show up and save them from their

misery. Thus, his characters seem incapable of taking right

decisions to improve their lives. The Pensioner, the Officer, the

Billposter, and the doorkeeper resemble each other in spending

their time doing very little, because they cannot normally behave

until that thing happens or that person arrives. All of them are

tortured because they obsess themselves in dreaming and waiting

and the process of waiting in itself is boring.

In general, time is so significant throughout human practical

life because life itself is very short. When someone has a job to do,

he will be in a bad need for more time to finish it and because of

man's many obligations, for example, he does not find more time to

finish all his work throughout his life. Thus we can see easily the

process of finishing work for such busy man is a race against time.

Moreover, the process of waiting itself for another who never comes

is to some extent boring and almost unbearable. Apparently, the

four distressed figures in the play are forced to keep waiting since

they have no other choice left for them due to their cruel

circumstances though "the act of waiting is itself a contradictory

combination of doing nothing and doing something."32

However,

waiting with no avail for someone who would never come is not only

suffering but tedious and tiresome, reflecting the absurdity of

miserable life, loneliness, bitter realism, resentment, doubt and

ambiguity.

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The Poet, another character in the play, inwardly suffers since

he feels that he is doomed to failure in his career as a poet that he is

misunderstood by people and he also physically suffers from the

gadflies' stings while writing his poems, thus he keeps staining his

body with mud to avoid the bites of the troublesome insects so that

"he doesn't feel the gadflies' stings after that" (p.49).

Edith, another character in the play, suffers from her ugliness

which makes her so unattractive and unpleasant that no one likes

her or at least try to dance with her. Her feelings of despair increase

when she sees Alice's happiness which ignites the emotion of

bitterness inside her as she wishes that she could have the qualities

of Alice. One can easily conclude that life is full of contradictions, in

which someone is happy, another is sad, thus while "Alice is

rejoicing … Edith is weeping"(p.60).

In this play, Strindberg successfully confirms the idea of

contradiction when sometimes he makes happiness goes side by side

with sadness, especially when he gives in the play two factual

contradictory images of the sea which gives and takes. The sea once

is good when it gives the poor fisherman a fish, making him

delighted with his fishing as he "pulls a fishhook out of a fish and its

heart comes along through its throat". (p.59) Once again, the sea is

evil when it takes the souls of some sailors or fishermen since it "is

salt because the sailors weep so much … They're always going

away" (Ibid). Strindberg is right in his assessment of life's

contradictions since it is a matter of fact that Mighty God has

created everything on this earth in contrast to each other. He creates

life versus death, love versus hatred, happiness versus sadness,

reward versus punishment, strength versus weakness, coldness

versus heat and so on. Human beings should willingly accept this

fact because man in general cannot do anything about it despite the

fact that man in general strives hard to enhance his conditions

throughout his lifetime. Strindberg does his best when he depicts a

gloomy contradictory image of the dullness of life on the tongue of

the Lawyer when he says:

Yes, I wake up in the morning with a

headache , and the repetition begins

… in reverse. In such a way that

everything that last night was a

beautiful, pleasant, clever, memory,

today presents as evil, vile, stupid.

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Pleasure sort of rots, and joy goes to

pieces. What human beings call success

always becomes the cause of the next

defeat. The success I've had in life became

my ruination. … Being talented is extremely

dangerous, for you can easily starve to

death! (p.61).

Though man always attempts to make progress throughout his

lifetime he should not expect a joyful and better life to himself or to

others because when life is good and pleasant! No wonder it ends up

with something bad or unpleasant as the lawyer pessimistically

concludes that it "ends up either in prison or in the insane asylum"

(p.64).

Some people in this mortal world according to their

experience in life have an excessively pessimistic view of happiness,

considering it deceitful as the Newlyweds family do in the play when

the Husband expresses fear of happiness as he reveals: "I fear

happiness! It's deceitful!", (p.59) or they avoid being happy due to

their belief that the seed of sadness stems from happiness when they

think that "in the midst of happiness grows the seed of unhappiness;

it consumes itself as the flame of fire" (p.58).

The Blindman, another character in the play, suffers due to

his blindness that he is unable to see and his suffering is increased as

he expresses concern about his only son who travels abroad via the

sea where he may be harmed or killed because the sea is full of

dangers as he says: "My son, my only child, is going to foreign

countries by way of the wide sea" (p.59).

Although the Coalheavers, other characters in the play, are

skilled manual workers, spending most of their time in work, are

still poor, lamenting their bad luck when they compare themselves

with rich people, saying "We who work the most get to eat the least;

and the rich who don't do anything have the most" (P.63). Besides,

they also suffer when they are indirectly deprived of their

expectations, hope, entertainment and even the opportunity to bathe

themselves in the sea.

The play is a genre by itself as it gathers expressionism,

romance, contradictions, and absurdity of life. Moreover,

Strindberg effectively implies comic, tragic, and absurd elements in

dynamic fusion in his play by depending on showing contradictory

and ridiculous situations of happiness and sadness at the same time,

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making spectators and readers laugh, for instance, at the Poet when

the latter soaks his body with mud to avoid the gadflies' stings and

then they pity him when the Daughter recites his poem in which he

is very indignant, expressing great regret at the humanity's

destiny when he painfully asks that: "Why are we born like beasts/

We who are divine and human"(p.71). The poet's poem is so

pessimistic that it expresses a contradictory image of life when

"Every joy which you enjoy/ Brings sorrow to all others" (Ibid). For

the poet, life is a puzzle and that "No one has yet solved the riddle of

life" (Ibid)! The Poet also gives an example of the absurdity of life

when ships named "Justice, Friendship, The Golden Peace, Hope"

are sunk. After mentioning the shipwrecks, the poet offers an

indirect appeal to Mighty God to elevate man's inferior status as a

human being to a superior one as a spiritual being, in the form of an

anguished question:

Why are we born like animals?

We who stem from God and man,

Whose souls are longing to be clothed

In other than this blood and filth. (Ibid).

The play successfully demonstrates not only the power of

environment and its negative effects on all characters but also the

latter's passive thinking that wraps their life and makes it gloomy

especially when the Officer is not only shackled by the castle which

is like a jail, that surrounds him where he is degraded to do the job

of a groom but also by his wishful thinking to expect that his

beloved will one day return. Furthermore, the play attempts to show

the power of dreaming in rescuing the scourged people from their

agonies, but unfortunately, nothing has been achieved. Yet,

Strindberg tries to solve the painful enigma that stands behind

man's existence which is the purpose of his play. For Strindberg the

life is a puzzle and that "No one has yet solved the riddle of life"

(Ibid)! He bases his play on similar differences, psychological inner

conflicts, and contradictions, such as body versus soul, Fairhaven

versus Foulstrand, beauty versus ugliness, love versus hate, and the

like, as if he wanted to say that these are the components of the

mortal world not the spiritual one, thus one can easily conclude that

Strindberg as a social reformer who is fully aware of the agonies of

life has a strong desire to help and care for people when he

embodies his beliefs and thoughts in the character of the Poet.

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The play can be regarded as a message not only to God when

Indra's daughter takes the Poet's poem which is full of humanity's

agony to her father to let him acquainted with but also to all human

beings to disdain the impermanent materialistic world and follow

the steps of the permanent

spiritual life by keeping distance from worldly matters and even this

is difficult for them since it is hardly to be achieved in this mortal

world because man himself is made of two contradictory things;

body and soul. The human body is physical which emerges from

dust and will belong to dust while the soul is non-physical part

which continues existing after the body is dead as most people

believe. The body and the soul are created by mighty God and the

contrast between them is further emphasized by their conflicting

characteristics of dirt (the body) and cleanliness (the soul). Thus,

man who always seeks perfection throughout his lifetime is always

at war with himself because the quality of perfection is exceedingly

rare unless man resolves to leave the materialistic life whose

sequences are terrible and unpleasant and resort to the true life

through selecting its heavenly path which is very pleasant and

enjoyable.

In fact, there is no development in the play as no character

develops; on the contrary the lives of all of them in their striving to

improve their conditions go from bad to worse because all of them

were not satisfied and contented with their life. Moreover, all the

characters except the Poet who strives hard through his poem

mentioned above to promote humans' conditions, attach too much

importance to material possessions which vanish sooner or later.

The Irish dramatist Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) remarks in his

masterpiece She Stoops to Conquer (1773) through the mouth of Mr.

Hasting as the latter advises his beloved Miss Neville to "Perish

fortune. Love and content will increase what we possess beyond a

monarch's revenue." 33

In other words, Goldsmith intends to say

that only spiritual things achieve happiness for humanity.

However, A Dream Play can be regarded as a chaotic strife of

man during his searching to discover the truth of life which is

described by Strindberg throughout the events of the play as it is

full of depression, sufferings, agonies, repetition, in addition to

contradictions, leading to the downfall of all the characters in the

play and sometimes to more agony especially when someone loses

his best lovers, such as brothers, sons, and friends because life itself

is "Meeting and parting! Parting and meeting" (p.60)!

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Many examples are mentioned in English literature,

especially in William Shakespeare's tragic plays, of people who

reach their downfall when they degrade themselves to worldly

things rather than elevating

themselves to a higher state of spirituality when selecting the path of

evil, imagining their choice will bring them happiness as they

previously desire due to their social and psychological diseases such

as excessive ambition, insatiable greed, and selfishness. Macbeth,

the tragic hero of the play which bears his name Macbeth reaches

his downfall as he chooses evil under the pressure of his a greedy

wife as a way to fulfill their ambition for power. He commits

regicide to become King and then furthers his moral descent with a

series of murderous terror to stay in power, eventually plunging the

country into civil war and losing not only his life but also his wife's.

In Hamlet, King Claudius also meets his downfall when he commits

a regicide by murdering and usurping the wife and the throne of his

brother. In Richard II, King Richard reaches his downfall as he

indulges himself in his personal interests such as frivolity and self-

centeredness.

However, if man falls into despair, he should not yield to his

self-destructive voices that lead him to his agony but to his self-

denial voices which eventually lead him to happiness. The play's

miserable characters who oppress themselves when they only

submit to the processes of waiting or dreaming about things that

they would very much like to happen or have are confined to their

self imprisonment that they enable themselves to do nothing but

dreaming or waiting for a miracle that may come and pick them up

from their misery. It is a matter of fact that real power gushes out

from inside man not from outside. Thus, man must have a great

deal of faith in himself to feel confident about his ability to achieve

his goal in life by working seriously on it. Man should appreciate his

current situation and enjoy each moment throughout his life

because life itself is short and time is passing whether he accepts or

not. However, there are many examples in English literature,

showing characters facing their distress and painful emotions

seriously and defeating them such as the smart and the pretty girl,

Viola, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night when she is exposed along

with her brother Sebastian to a shipwreck near Illyria. She survives

the shipwreck, believing that Sebastian is drowned. Being lonely,

vulnerable, and lost in an unknown country, Viola gathers all her

mental and self powers to protect herself from the snares of

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mischievous people. Thus, she disguises herself as a page-boy and

works in the Illyria governor palace. Being beautiful, decent, and

intelligent, Viola conquers the governor's heart and finally they got

married.

Another example is the character of Pamela in Samuel

Richardson novel whose title carries its heroine name. Pamela tells

the story of a beautiful young poor maid named Pamela whose

master, Mr. B. makes unwanted advances towards her. She is so

sincere that she rejects him continually and her virtue is eventually

rewarded when he shows his sincerity by proposing an equitable

marriage to her.

Strindberg's play is for the betterment of mankind when it

shows the difficult situations of different slices of people who have to

struggle against all kinds of contradictions to ease their life, the

expression of agony and grief of humanity due to its attach to

physical surroundings rather than spiritual values as well as the

dramatist's intention to redeem depressed humans through sharing

their suffering.

Notes

1-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Strindberg#cite_note-105

2-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Married_(Strindberg)

3-http://voices.yahoo.com/the-misogyny-august-strindberg.

4- http://wendysmithbrooklyn.wordpress.com/tag/august-strindberg

5- In an essay written by Robert Brustein in a book edited by Travis

Bogard and William I. Oliver, Modern Drama, Essays in Criticism

(London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.332.

6- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism_ (theatre)

7-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Strindberg)).

8- Ibid

9-Travis Bogard and William I. Oliver, Modern Drama, Essays in

Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.333.

10- Ibid 335

11- Ibid.336

12- Ibid p.321

13- Ibid.

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14- Arvid Paulson, ed. and trans. Letters of Strindberg to Harriet

Bosse, p.87. as quoted in Modern Drama, Essays in Criticism p. 351.

15- Ibid p.321

16- Ibid

17- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Strindberg

18-http://www.geni.com/people/August-Strindberg.

19- http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat

20-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism_ (theatre).

21- http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-D

22- Ibid

23- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Strindberg

24- Ibid

25- Travis Bogard and William I. Oliver, Modern Drama, Essays in

Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.342.

26- http:www.notable.quotes.com

27- Oscar G. Brockett, The Theater: An Introduction (New York:

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), p.298.

28- August Strindberg," An explanatory Note" to A Dream Play in

Walter Johnson, trans., A Dream Play and Four Chamber Plays

(New York: Norton & Co., Inc., 1975), p.19. Subsequent references

to this edition will appear in this paper.

29- Ibid

30- Allardyce Nicoll, World Dreams: From Aeschvlus to Anoulith

(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1964), p. 562.

31- Raymond Williams. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (London:

Chatto & Windus, 1971), p.95.

32-Ronald Hayman, Samuel Beckett (London: Heinemann, 1980),

p.4.

33- Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, ed. A.N. Jeffares,

York Press, Beirut, 1989, p. 78.

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مغزى آالم االنسان في مسرحية أوكست سترندبرك المسرحية الحمم م.م.غسان عواد أبراهيم

لجامعةامتراث الكمية / لمغة أالنجميزيةاقسم مستخمصال

لمعاناة البشرية بأألعتماد عمى فن ألمذهب التعبيري حيث استخدم أوكست سترندبركبمعالجة يعني هذا ألبحثة ليظهر المشاعر, بدال من تقديم الحقيقة المادية من خالل عرض نماذج منوعة الكاتب رموز وعبارات مبالغ

الشخاص معينين من المجتمع الذي يعيشون فيه ويعانون الم وقمق كبيرين.البشرية عندما حاولت بشدة جعل الناس ان يرجعوا الى القيم الروحية كتبت مسرحية سترندبرك لتحسين أالوضاع

بدال من الممتمكات المادية لتحقيق السعادة في الحياة.