Assignment task: A doll house play discussion question:
Q1. Discuss situational ethics in the play here: Q: Is what is illegal also necessarily immoral (or vice versa) in this play? Justify your response.
Q2. Discuss Nora and Kristine here: Q: What did you think of each initially?
Did your feelings change? What specific things caused you to change your mind?
Kristine acts as an iconoclast (someone who destroys the illusions held by others). How? How do you feel about her actions here and why do you feel this way?
Address the idea of women and children as property during this time and how that might impact how you see Nora's eventual decision to leave her family as well as the idea that women in Nora's day had limited opportunities for employment outside marriage.
About icons: It just dawned on me that you all associate icons with computers, your iPhones, etc. Originally, this word designated paintings in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Early in the 8-9th centuries, a group of people thought these were graven images and went around smashing them (this also happened in England when they departed from catholicism and especially during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia when they attempted to replace religion with communism.) Here is an example of an icon: (the first iconoclasts existed b/c they felt these were "graven images" forbidden in the 10 commandments; the Bolsheviks, on the other hand, felt that they represented something that was simply an illusion in their philosophy, religion.
Q3. Discuss the following things here:
- macaroons
- the Christmas tree
- the tarantella
- a miracle (or the wonderful depending on your translation)
Q4. Discuss Torvald, Dr. Rank, and Krogstad here:
These are the important men in the play. Look at the character of each. How do they relate to each other/impact each other? Which one(s) surprised/surprises you at the end? How and why?\