Love, Guilt, Death and Art in Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken

Abstract

This article presents an original interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s play When We Dead Awaken by advancing a hypothesis which explains Rubek and Irene’s path into death as an act of atonement. The analysis encompasses reflections on the meaning of terms such as love, life, art and guilt in the context of the work. The article emphasises the importance of children’s education, which proves itself to be the only effective way to contribute to mankind’s refinement—something very important in the main character’s view. In its last part the article seeks causes of the altered behaviour of the main characters immediately before their deaths (especially their feeling of attraction to death).