The Wild Duck Journal 4

There is a foil between the characters, Gregers and Relling in the play The Wild Duck. This foil is used to represent two opinions of whether the truth rules all, or if it is sometimes better to lie. Gregers is a firm believer in the truth. In act 1, he asks his father about the truth, and decides that it will be he job to tell Hjalmar the truth that his father has been keeping from him. Relling is the opposite of Gregers. Relling is always lying to people in order to save their happiness. He believes that if a lie can bring happiness, then it is worth more than the truth. In act 5, Relling tells Gregers that the way he treats Hjalmar's "sickness" is to, ". . . keep up the life-lie in him." He thinks that a way to treat someone's unhappiness is to lie to them. The foil is shown most in their conversation about Hjalmar's "sickness," but is also shown in the end after Hedvig's death. The two men argue about what will happen to Hjalmar in the future. Relling thinks that the death will bring only temporary, superficial greatness in Hjalmar, where Gregers believes that the death will change Hjalmar for the better.