Is Life Worth Living?

Is life worth living? In a genre that is fundamentally based on human suffering, misery and despair, this query is one that often hangs in the tragic air, implicitly if not explicitly. Sometimes it materialises as a questioning of whether life is worth the inevitable pain that it entails. Hamlet ponders:

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether `tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? (Hamlet, III.i.56-60)

This soliloquy is perhaps the most famous in the English canon because it resonates with so many people, examining a possibility that the majority of individuals consider at one time or another. Indeed, many tragic characters actually act on this impulse to end all adversity by ending their life. For example, Euripides' Phaedra hangs herself once Hippolytus rejects her secret love - finding 'one way and one alone to meet my present pass' - whilst Shakespeare's Cleopatra - separated by death from her lover and not wishing to see 'some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness/ I` the posture of a whore' - performs the 'noble act' and kills herself with an asp. What is particularly notable about Hamlet's deliberation, however, is the fact that he debates which option is nobler in the mind (such considerations implicitly also play their part in Phaedra and Cleopatra's suicides). Rather than simply wondering which path yields the most pleasure and least pain - in accordance with Freud's pleasure principle - he hints that it is actually the perception of his actions that is the most important factor. After all, as he has already stated in Act II scene ii, 'there is nothing either good or/ bad, but thinking makes it so'. Hamlet speaks from an archetypally skeptical position. In his Shakespeare's Scepticism, Graham Bradshaw explains Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' monologue as 'a balancing of alternatives-about the ''nobler'' course, about the right expectation concerning death's aftermath, about the process of choice itself.' He compares Shakespeare to his near-contemporary Michel de Montaigne, whose 'essays dramatize the unreadiness of his belief to come down on any conclusion without allowing for the possibility of its opposite [.] that representative skeptic method of balancing opposing views' and claims that Shakespeare also 'put contrary views into combat to test their strength'. Thus Hamlet's debate about whether or not to kill himself may be viewed as merely an exercise of his mental faculties; his intellect distancing him from the reality of death. Shakespeare's employment of the word 'nobler' gestures towards a similar attitude to suicide to that of Horatio, who declares he is 'more an antique Roman than a Dane', yet Hamlet's later acknowledgement of his 'dread of something after death' also hints at the possibility of a Christian hell. The comparison of death to sleep and the potential dreams that may disrupt eternal peace underline the never ending workings of the mind. Shakespeare suggests through Hamlet that life is only worth living if one thinks it is. This links in with many of the ideas that Ibsen explores in his drama. At the end of The Wild Duck, once the loving Hedvig has fired a pistol into her breast on her fifteenth birthday, Gregers declares that she 'has not died in vain' as 'grief brought out what was noblest' in her father. After Relling disputes this belief, stating that in nine months 'little Hedvig will be nothing more than the theme of a pretty little party piece' and that Hjalmar will be seen 'wallowing deeper and deeper in sentimentality and self-pity', Gregers replies 'If you are right and I am wrong, life will no longer be worth living'. Ibsen, influenced by the existential works of Kierkegaard, is thus addressing the view that life is intrinsically meaningless, but also suggests that this lack of intrinsic significance or worth gives individuals the freedom to create their own purpose in life. Hence the objective fact is that Hedvig is dead, yet whether or not her suicide has a value or purpose depends on the views of those around her and this in turn feeds into the question of whether or not life is worth living. Notably Ibsen, like Shakespeare, draws on the idea of nobility as a significant factor in determining the potential worth of suicide. Relling claims that 'life wouldn't be too bad if only these blessed people who come canvassing their ideals round everybody's door would leave us poor souls in peace.' He is shifting the blame of the incident onto Gregers, implying that Hedvig's tragic death was the culmination of a sequence of events that Gregers set off as part of his 'claim of the ideal', his determination that once Hjalmar and Gina had 'laid bare' their 'souls' they may 'build a completely new mode of life - a way of living together in truth, free of all deception' and ultimately found a 'true marriage'. Gregers arguably destroys the life of a functioning family by imposing his own beliefs upon them. As Hjalmar explains to his old friend, Gina 'doesn't understand us'. Hence the tragedy is the result of clashing attitudes to life being violently forced together. This may be comparable to Kierkegaard's exploration of existence in Either/Or, in which the Danish philosopher contrasts two differing attitudes towards life in an attempt to uncover the ultimate truth; his own personal stance can only be inferred from the juxtaposition of the beliefs of his two fictional pseudonymous authors. Similarly to Hamlet's monologue and Nietzsche's dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, the meaning derives from the conflict itself. Ibsen's earlier play Brand investigates similar themes. Although Ibsen was initially annoyed with his friend Georg Brandes for comparing Brand to Kierkegaard - claiming that although he had read Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, he `had read very little and understood even less` of the existentialist philosopher - he acknowledged Kierkegaard's influence on his work from that point onwards and Brand certainly explores comparable ideas. The priest Brand lives his life in strict accordance with his entrenched belief in 'all or nothing' and to 'let faith be life'. His refusal for compromise, however, results in his mother dying with her sins unatoned and the preventable deaths of both his son and wife. Brand's struggle to fight a fragmented view of man and God reflects Kierkegaard's extensive discussion of the opposition between faith and reason, the importance of making decisive choices and suffering in the name of God. Brand is presented as a disciplined, strong-willed, devout individual that - especially when compared to the hypocrisy and selfishness of the Mayor who claims that 'truth isn't worth the fright' and the Dean who states that 'Religion's like high art,/ much better kept apart/ for those who can commune' - is Christ-like in his suffering. That said, through Brand's final doubts - 'Answer! What do we die to prove? / Answer!' - and the final ambiguous line of the play uttered by an anonymous voice - 'He is the God of Love' - Ibsen questions whether Brand's religious suffering is indeed a self-indulgent sin in itself, for as the Chorus declares 'All your sacrificial savour/ smells like any carnal feast'. Thus Brand - 'in love with the ideal' - may be compared to Gregers in The Wild Duck. What Relling does not seem to fully appreciate is that Gregers' own 'life-lie' - his equivalent to Hjalmar's invention, Ekdal's hunting and Molvik's 'daemonic' nature - is his ideals and the passion he derives from attempting to realise them in individuals other than himself. Earlier in the play Relling claims: 'take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness'. This 'life-lie' - or as Eva le Gallienne alternatively translates it 'the pet illusion' - appears to relate to Kierkegaard's theory that contentment in life can only be achieved if an individual devotes himself fully to an invented purpose. Gregers bellows at Hedvig 'if only you'd had your eyes opened to what really makes life worth while!' Yet to the adolescent girl the loving of Hjalmar and the wild duck are exactly what makes life worth living. Likewise for Ekdal there is 'no difference for him' between the 'four or five withered old Christmas trees' he has collected and the 'whole tremendous living forest of Hoidal'. The 'life-lie is the stimulating principle': if Relling had not convinced Molvick that he was a 'demonic', he asserts, then 'the poor devil would have succumbed to mortification and despair years ago'. Indeed it is only when - unable to deal with his own 'sick conscience' - Gregers shatters the illusions of the Ekdal family that tragedy ensues. Life is worth living as long as it is lived under a veil of illusion: an individual can only be happy if they believe what they want to believe. This view is at the heart of many tragedies. Sophocles' Oedipus in his King Oedipus is comparatively content with his life of power and familial love until he discovers that he has in fact committed patricide and incest. 'Know yourself', the Delphic oracle tells him. Yet it is the revelation that his own view of himself is not consistent with his deeds that leads to his misery and his ultimate tragic death (in Oedipus at Colonus). In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard`s author argues that the finite and infinite parts of a human being always exist in a state of tension and must be brought into conscious balance. He claims that when the self is not balanced the person is in a state of despair, although the individual may be oblivious to this fact and believe himself to be happy. Thus, according to Kierkegaard`s philosophy, Oedipus is always in despair, even before he comes to understand his deeds. Likewise, there may be a 'poison atmosphere' in the Ekdal household despite Hjalmar, Hedvig and Old Ekdal not knowing about Gina's previous sexual relations. This suggests that in many tragedies there is an underlying sense that doom in inevitable in an ultimately meaningless life. Shakespeare explores similar ideas in Macbeth through his employment of repetition and an atmosphere of seemingly suspended time. Although Macbeth's 'life-lie' is his ambition, the ideal that thrusts him forward, he often treats the future as if it were the past. The very first line of the play - 'When shall we three meet again?' - hints that the events of the play are merely a repetition of that which has already happened. As Emily R. Wilson notes in Mocked with Death; Tragic Overliving from Sochocles to Milton 'the witches look forward to the future, through prophecy; for those with second sight, all action, even future action, seems already predetermined and hence, repetitious'. Shakespeare thus hints at the possibility that life may not be worth living, as it is a static and uncontrollable force that involves much sorrow. The very thing that makes life worth living for Macbeth - the only 'spur/ To prick the sides' of his 'intent' is his 'vaulting ambition' and fervent desire to 'overleap' the present and jump straight into a future of power and glory - is that which also causes him much anguish and eventually leads to his death. Indeed, the Chorus' declaration in Sophocles' Oedipus at Coloneus expresses a view point that is interrogated in many tragedies:

Not to be born conquers every logos. But when one is born, to go back where one came from as fast as possible is by far the second. (1124-7)

This statement appears to relate back to Oedipus' lament in King Oedipus that Cithaeron received him and did not 'taking me,/ kill me at once, so that I had never shown/ myself to men, the source of my birth'. Both Oedipus' and the Chorus' speeches appear to demonstrate 'the death drive' described by Freud in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle and certainly accord with Schopenhauer, who insisted in The World as Will and Presentation that 'death is the goal of life'. However, interestingly Oedipus does not wish that he had never been conceived, but that he was killed as an infant. Moreover, although he wished he was killed then - before he had shown himself to men - he does not attempt to commit suicide after the revelation, instead blinding himself. Although he gives numerous reasons for this action, the only consistency in his explanation is the element of self-blinding as a denial and avoidance of truth: he does not want to be able to see the consequence of his actions. If he killed himself he believes he would have to 'look at my own father when I come to Hades or could see my wretched mother'. Yet, as the Chorus Leader asserts, it is surely 'better to be dead than alive and blind', which Oedipus himself acknowledges when he claims that the 'acts' he has committed are 'so vile that even if I hanged myself/ that would not be sufficient punishment'. Sophocles thus implies that Oedipus keeps himself alive in the ultimate deed of self-loathing. Life is more of a punishment than death. Likewise, in The Wild Duck Hjalmar sees Werle's encroaching blindness as a 'just retribution' for metaphorically 'blinding a trusting fellow creature', and it is the new knowledge of Werle's weakening sight that 'opens' Hjalmar's 'eyes to all sorts of possibilities', including the realization that Hedvig's strained vision may be a sign that she is not really his daughter. Hence both Hedvig and Oedipus lose their sight and eventually their life as a result of their recently discovered parentage. In each case their death fulfills Andrew Bennett's definition of a tragic death being 'both inevitable and 'right' but at the same time in some sense unjustifiable and unacceptable'. Hedvig and Oedipus both embody sexual misdemeanors and die for it, yet in neither case is it their fault and in neither case does their curse die with them. Death does not end the suffering.