When Nora Helmer slammed the door to her doll's house in 1879, her message sent a shockwave across the world that persists to this day. “I must be left alone,” Nora declares, “if I am to understand myself and everything that concerns me” (Ibsen 64). After years of playing the role of a superficial doll, Nora transforms into an assertive and determined woman. While significant events in A Doll's House precipitate her sudden actions, the true cause of Nora's transformation stems from a revolution from within. Ibsen dramatizes the discovery of Nora's identity using various literary techniques. By the end of the play, Nora has survived a searing deconstruction of a false sense of self, the doll, and experiences the equally painful emergence of a new being, devoid of social pressures and expectations who had haunted her for years. Through her myth of transformation, Nora reveals herself to be an ideal tragic heroine. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In the unreal world of A Doll's House, all roles and assumptions are elusive; “Wife” and “mother” are the types of facades that represent the happy family game in which the dolls pretend to be human beings. Nora's dual character is revealed little by little. She is both a “macaron-munching child-wife and a heroine of ethical living” (Durbach 63). Nora's struggle to find her identity can be closely examined through her confrontations with the other major characters in the story. In these experiences, the audience becomes increasingly aware of Nora's thought processes and true characteristics. As the play progresses, the doll dies and the walls of the dollhouse begin to crack; Nora Helmer becomes a different person. Nora's unraveling begins with the arrival of Christine Linde in Helmer's dollhouse. Nora's childhood friend, Linde seems to be everything Nora is not. From the moment she enters the room, she becomes a complete juxtaposition with Nora: a displaced, independent traveler enters the home of an immature, lush housewife. The image of "doll" versus "not-doll" is made quite clear as Linde, pale, thin and miserable, dresses in shabby traveling clothes while Nora talks about her lavish dress for an upcoming party. Nora talks about her supposedly happy home life, almost as if she is excited to have a new guest in the dollhouse that she can "play" with. Christine recounts the tragedy that struck her: her husband died, leaving her neither money nor children. Linde teases Nora that she knows “so little of the burdens and troubles of life” (Ibsen 10). “You’re like the others,” Nora replies. “They all think that I am incapable of anything really serious and that I have not experienced anything in this world of worries” (10). Nora is quick to defend herself, pointing out that she borrowed money, without Torvald's knowledge, to pay for the trip to Italy. What began as a physical juxtaposition of contrasting appearances now becomes a pattern of contrasting images as it relates to femininity. "One by one, Mrs. Linde shed the bonds (and the roles they imply) that confined the wife in the doll's house and defined the angel in the late Victorian house: the husband unloved and loveless is dead, which frees Christine from Nora's role as wife there are no children, which frees her from Nora's happy and determined motherhood; there is no house, no property, whichfrees Christine from the life of a doll herself, from Nora's happy household in her bourgeois paradise" (Durbach 95-96). Yet, for all the independent values ​​she embodies, Linde also shows Nora that the real world in Outside the Dollhouse is cold, harsh, and loveless. Nora gets a better glimpse of the real world during her encounters with Nils Krogstad. A parallel irony is evident between these two: both are guilty of forgery. a mirror that reflects on Nora's image of a man whose fatal mistake makes him a victim of society. Although Krogstad's motive for confronting Nora is to obtain his position at her husband's bank, her. entry definitely threatens the safety of the Dollhouse. If Linde is Nora's opposite, then Krogstad is her parallel. Under the skin, he and Nora are both criminals. It is extremely ironic that Krogstad threatens to blackmail Nora. in an attempt to gain respect He proves that desperate people can do desperate things, as Nora learns almost later in the play. During his second meeting with Krogstad, the two outcasts discuss suicide and the courage it takes to achieve it.NORA: I have enough courage for that. now.KROGSTAD: Oh, you can't scare me. A beautiful, spoiled lady like you. NORA: You'll see, you'll see. KROGSTAD: Under the ice, perhaps? In cold, coal-black water? And then, in the spring, coming to the surface, all horrible and unrecognizable, with your hair falling out... NORA: You can't scare me. KROGSTAD: Me neither. People don't do such things, Ms. Helmer. (Ibsen 43-44) Her demand pushes Nora to the brink of indecision and gives her the courage to accept responsibility and the consequences of her actions. At the end of the play, the audience realizes that Krogstad is not the villain of the tale. If anything, her husband is the real villain (more on that later). Similar to Krogstad's misery reflecting Nora's deception, Krogstad's eventual moral recovery and change parallels his spiritual metamorphosis. Before this final encounter with Krogstad, however, Nora confronts the dying Dr. Rank. Death and illness are indeed important themes in the play, from Krogstad's moral illness to Rank's physical disorder. In Dr. Rank, Nora sees the mirror of her own inevitable death. He is the main representative of the illness motif, calling himself “the most miserable of all [his] patients” (37). Because he suffers for "his father's youthful amusements", Rank demonstrates another theme of the story that corruption and malevolence are hereditary. Apparently, Nora is afraid that her deception will taint her children, and she takes steps to ensure their well-being if she disappears. As Dr. Rank slowly dies throughout the play, Nora's wooden doll shell simultaneously disintegrates and decomposes. But in Nora's case, a new, empowered woman is born. As a last resort, Nora attempts to use her sexual prowess to get money from Rank. His major moral miscalculations encourage Rank to admit his embarrassing declaration of love for her. A sense of darkness enters the scene and Nora is caught in the struggle between the doll and the woman. Her former self, the doll, would have continued to play the role of seductress, acquiring money and using Dr. Rank to her liking. However, at this decisive moment, Nora's new morality prevails: “Bring the lamp,” she orders the servant (40 years old). By calling for light, Nora wishes to restore the joyful atmosphere to the doll's house. Nevertheless, the dramatic effect of the call for light underlines the fact that Nora has a sudden glimpse of the darkness and ugliness of Dollydom. His illusions are dispelled by aself-awareness and a willpower that her doll persona has long lacked. Realizing the evil in the dollhouse and within herself, Nora decides to end Dollydom. For her, however, the opposite of doll life is death. The dollhouse is all she knows. Nora decides that her Tarantella dance will be her last deadly performance, as she views the end of the party not only as the end of her marriage, but also as death. also the last moments of his life. The scene in which the dance is performed has an important underlying meaning. Nora wants Torvald's full attention to keep his thoughts away from Krogstad's ruinous note in the mailbox. In many ways, her life hangs by a thread:HELMER: My dear Nora darling, you dance like your life depends on it.NORA: That's right. (47)She the tarantella is also a symbolic dance of death that Rank, rightly, plays for her on the piano. Her frantic, frantic movements symbolize the maelstrom in which she is caught. But at the very epicenter, the dying doll finally gives up, albeit in chaos, despair and uncertainty, so that the woman can emerge. The tarantella thus embodies his loss and his reconquest of identity. The real question, however, is whether or not Nora will resort to suicide. Rank reappears at the start of Act III, and he and Nora know, or at least think, that they are going to die soon:NORA: Sleep well Dr. Rank.RANK: Thank you for this wish.NORA: Wish me the same .RANK: You? Well, if you want to... sleep well. And thank you for the light. (57) Nora learned from Dr. Rank's stoic acceptance of necessity how to face death without hysteria. These two mirror each other one last time, as Nora lights her cigar. Metaphorically, this moment "rekindles the poignant memory of what each has lost in each other...the nourishing fire, the light, the ardor of a joyful life" (Durbach 89). There is one last illusion left before Nora can fully commit to her. decision. The “wonderful thing,” as she calls it, will confirm her belief that “when the world collapses, Torvald will remain a pillar of selfless self-sacrifice and prove himself a man worth dying for” (64). Throughout the play, he constantly treats her like a child, particularly through his diminutive language and controlling mentality towards her. For years, she played the role of the doll, her “lark” and her “squirrel,” to make her wishes come true. Because of this manipulation, Nora is convinced that Torvald will take the blame on himself when the dollhouse collapses. “I have often wished that you were threatened with great danger,” he asserts, “that I might risk my blood and all for you” (Ibsen 58). As the male puppet of the house, Torvald, like Nora, has come to believe so resolutely in the doll's identity that the idea replaces reality. Torvald's reaction to the knowledge of his wife's deception, although unexpected by Nora, is expected by the audience. . He breaks down in the last fifteen minutes of the play, wondering how the incident will reflect on him. After Krogstad's apology, Torvald's attitude changes: he tells Nora that even though they can no longer be the loving couple they once were, they should stay together to maintain the appearance of a life happy family. Nora, in her final epiphanic experience, realizes what audiences have always understood, that independence is necessary to break free from the fantasy world and false romantic expectations that the dollhouse represents. She recognizes that all of her tastes and beliefs come from either Torvald or her father. Torvald, although sometimes unbearable, is the only one., 1958. 3-68.