AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE a synopsis and analysis of the play by Henrik Ibsen

The following essay on An Enemy of the People was originally published in The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Emma Goldman. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1914. pp. 34-42. DR. THOMAS STOCKMANN is called to the position of medical adviser to the management of the "Baths," the main resource of his native town. A sincere man of high ideals, Dr. Stockmann returns home after an absence of many years, full of the spirit of enterprise and progressive innovation. For as he says to his brother Peter, the town Burgomaster, "I am so glad and content. I feel so unspeakably happy in the midst of all this growing, germinating life. After all, what a glorious time we do live in. It is as if a new world were springing up around us." BURGOMASTER: Do you really think so? DR. STOCKMANN: Well, of course, you can't see this as clearly as I do. You've spent all your life in this place, and so your perceptions have been dulled. But I, who had to live up there in that small hole in the north all those years, hardly ever seeing a soul to speak a stimulating word to me -- all this affects me as if I were carried to the midst of a crowded city -- I know well enough that the conditions of life are small compared with many other towns. But here is life, growth, an infinity of things to work for and to strive for; and that is the main point. In this spirit Dr. Stockmann sets to his task. After two years of careful investigation, he finds that the Baths are built on a swamp, full of poisonous germs, and that people who come there for their health will be infected with fever.