If Harry Potter were real, what celebrity would be his ideal romantic partner? That seems like a strange question, but every avid reader of the Harry Potter series is able to come up with likely answers. After so many volumes, Harry has coalesced into a living, breathing idea in the minds of countless fans because his feelings, desires, interactions, and decisions are realistic and justifiable even though he lives in a fantasy world. Authors like J.K. Rowling succeed when they create characters so real that readers shape a solid impression regarding who the character is and how the character should behave. Ray Bradbury succeeded with Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451, but Henrik Ibsen failed with Nora Helmer from A Doll’s House.
Both Guy and Nora are trapped in societies and situations they initially support: Guy is the burning fireman, Nora is the domesticated wife. Eventually, both characters tear themselves away from their oppressive circumstances. However, only Guy’s decisions ring true and inevitable; readers easily see the course of Montag’s actions as logical. Nora’s metamorphosis, however, feels sudden and improbable. Bradbury succeeds in making Guy believable because of his forceful and frequent use of foreshadowing.
From the very beginning of Fahrenheit 451, Guy questions the system under which he lives. He is clearly in a state of unrest when he responds this way after being asked if he is happy: “Of course I’m happy. What does she think? I’m not? he asked the quiet rooms. He stood looking up at the ventilator grille in the hall and suddenly remembered that something lay hidden behind the grille, something that seemed to peer down at him now” (Bradbury 10). What lays hidden behind the grille is a forbidden book that further foreshadows his sense of rebellion. Hence, the reader awaits Montag’s insurgence against the oppressive society in which he is a key player. His development into a revolutionary is the focus of the entire novel.
Because Montag’s emotional state is clear and his actions point toward the questions frothing in his mind, each subsequent decision he makes is believable. Stealing more books, finding Faber, killing Beatty,
abandoning Mildred, and escaping into the outskirts of society are all products of Montag’s disquiet and growing need to know the truth, to access the answerless knowledge found in books.
Nora’s condition in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is similarly unhappy. It is obvious from the play’s title that Nora’s home life is not her own but a thing others toy with and control. Her husband -- and her father before him -- is the center of Nora’s life. Husband, children, and a pampered existence are all supposed to bring her happiness, but they do not; they comprise the structure of an repressive system. Moreover, Torvald, her husband, is ungrateful when Nora saves his health and his wealth. These seem like strong reasons for Nora to abandon the “doll’s house” in the end to find personal happiness. However, the decision she makes to leave is incongruent with the desires and characterization presented earlier in the drama.
Throughout the majority of the play, Nora cares for nothing more than Torvald. She goes to extraordinary measures to keep a secret from him: that she saved his life by taking out a personal loan to help his health. She keeps the secret in part because of “how painful and humiliating it would be fore Torvald…to know that he owed me anything!” (Ibsen 12). Furthermore, the possible revelation of this secret is the focus of the play’s most prominent conflict. Nora contemplates asking a close family friend for money and more; she considers suicide. Yet in the end, the revelation of the secret is anti-climactic because it is Nora who urges Torvald to read the letter which uncovers it.
That instance, however, leads the to the true climax where Nora acts uncharacteristically. One moment, Nora tells Torvald “I have loved you above everything else in the world” (Ibsen 62) and the next she leaves him. In that swift moment, she heads out the door and abandons the doll’s house she has loved for nearly a decade. This is uncharacteristic of a person who has worked so hard to keep the marriage together, to make Torvald happy. True, he was ungrateful, scared, spiteful, but that was simply his first reaction. He may have come around as he begins to do near the end of the play where Nora doggedly proceeds with her abandonment. In addition to her decision being uncharacteristic, the character and tone of her dialogue also changes. Until this moment in the play, Nora appears superficial and not too bright where as she gains an abrupt depth of character at the end that was not believable.
Both Bradbury and Ibsen create interesting settings for their works, but only Bradbury succeeds in bringing the more competent and logical character to life.
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