Peer Gynt

“I wasn’t born for drowning.”

Peer’s assertion that he is meant for greatness serves as an imagined shield, a belief in his own invincibility. As the play bears out, he was not born for drowning. He doesn’t drown with the reindeer. He does not sink and drown with his exploding yacht. When the ship returning to Norway wrecks on an ice floe, he again escapes drowning. 

“Ah! You don’t understand. That’s our custom, here in the mountains. Nothing is what it seems. For example, when you come to my father’s palace, you probably won’t recognize it. You’ll think it’s a rubble-heap.”

The woman in green responds to Peer’s suggestion that the clothing she wears, which she calls gold, is only grass and hay. She introduces the motif that will repeat throughout the play in which things may not be what they seem, but they are what you call them. Peer responds by claiming that she would say the same if she saw his kingdom—a kingdom that doesn’t really exist. This raises the question as to why Peer wants to be emperor so badly that he would choose the life of a troll in order to be called a king. 

“You can tell a prince by the steed he rides!”

Ironically, Peer is riding off with the troll princess on the back of a huge pig. However, this turns out to be true, as his steeds throughout the play define him as a king. The pig belongs to a kingdom that is not worth ruling. His yacht, the steed of his rising empire in Morocco, represents a kingdom based on gold. The stolen horse, easily stolen from him, refers to a kingdom that is not and will never be his. When he is crowned the emperor of enlightenment by the madmen, he has no steed just as there is no kingdom. 

“None that I can see. Little trolls want to maul you, big trolls want to skewer you. Give humans half a chance, we’d do the same.”

When asked the difference between trolls and humans, Peer points out the brutality of humanity, something he has experienced at the hands of bullies in his village. Throughout the play, Peer demonstrates that he can be just as brutal, manipulating those he meets in order to achieve what he wants. However, the king identifies the quality of “trollishness” as being undiscerning, unable or unwilling to distinguish good from bad, especially in the service of self. 

“No, no. Belief is free. It’s outward appearance that makes a troll.”

Peer expects the troll king to force him to renounce Christianity, but the king’s assertion that belief is unimportant and “trollishness” results from outward appearance has a double meaning. It seems to suggest that trolls are trolls because they are ugly, regardless of who they are inside. But the king is also saying that inner belief systems are meaningless unless they manifest in action. Essentially, he is saying that you are who you seem to be. 

“Myself. Can you say as much?”

Unlike Peer, who is about to set off on a journey of self-exploration, the Bøyg is a fixed being, like all of the immortal entities who Peer encounters. Peer, who has just fled the troll kingdom, began there the process of abandoning a concept of an immutable self in favor of being “[him]self-ish” (81). His willingness to change for the sake of winning the kingdom—outwardly, if not his own perception and nature—has opened the door for him to continue to compromise. 

“As the Devil said when his Ma thrashed him because his Pa got drunk, ‘It’s the pure what gets the blame.’”

The woman in green is referring to the child she had with Peer, who has suffered because of his father’s abandonment. Throughout the play, the Devil, presumably reenacting his generationally inherited identity, is the scapegoat. He takes on the blame for tempting or causing Peer in particular to act badly. The woman’s comment highlights the ways in which those with agency can shape those without, and that identity is contingent and circular.

“Simple, gentlemen. It’s because I never married. To yourself be true. That’s my philosophy. Look out for Number One. You can’t do that if you’re a pack-camel for someone else’s well-being.”

By the time Peer has become successful in Morocco, he has adopted entirely the self-serving version of “be true to yourself-ish” (81). Just as he has no regard for the well-being of the Greeks as he plans to aid the Turks in crushing them for his own financial gain, Peer has no regard for anyone outside of his own interests. Obviously, this has led to great accumulated wealth, but it also leads to the destruction of this version of his identity. When his friends steal his yacht and belongings, they do so because they are horrified at his lack of empathy. As a villain, he deserves to be ruined. 

“The secret of success is simple: tread fearlessly, avoid life’s pitfalls, look to the horizon—and always keep a bridge behind to fall back on.”

Peer’s trite advice to his friends, which offers no real advice at all, glosses over the fact that Peer had to make himself the center of his own world in order to achieve financial success. Peer does not even follow his own advice. Perhaps he treads fearlessly, but it is more accurate to say he treads blindly. He assumes that his friends are trustworthy because they flatter him. He certainly doesn’t avoid pitfalls, as his friends trick him easily and steal his belongings. When he looks to the horizon, Peer is watching his own yacht and life sail away. And when his yacht is gone, it becomes clear that he has no bridge to fall back on. In actuality, Peer became financially successful by abandoning his scruples.

“Forget honor. Think of the money!”

Although Peer’s friends ostensibly steal his belongings as punishment for his immorality, Cotton’s comment highlights the fact that they are prey to temptation just as Peer has been. They justify the theft by claiming that Peer deserves to be stopped, but they are ultimately motivated by greed.

“Ignore other people. Help me! The world can look after itself for five minutes.”

In Peer’s trademark selfishness, he demands that God stop everything and help him, suggesting that his stolen wealth is the most important thing in the world. Although the yacht explodes, seemingly by divine intervention, the event still punishes Peer. Although he has the satisfaction of seeing his former friends receive retribution for stealing his yacht, the yacht and his riches are still gone. If one believes that this is indeed an act of divine intervention, then it is against rather than for Peer.

“In any case, when you come down to it, hearts matter more than souls.”

As Peer’s view of religion shifts, he is claiming that a person’s heart is more important than their soul. Or rather, how a person feels matters more than their strict adherence to religious guidelines. Since he believes that Anitra has no soul, he seems to be framing the soul as a product of Christianity. In the case of their relationship, which exists largely in his imagination, the supposed discrepancies between their souls need not act as a deterrent as long as their hearts go together.

“If someone has a soul, self’s all they think about. Instead of soul, take me—far better for us both.”

Peer seems to have reformed his understanding of success as a byproduct of necessary selfishness. He has adopted a hedonistic lifestyle, indulging in pleasure as the basis for his kingdom. As a businessman in Morocco, he made decisions he could rationalize based on his own view of the balance of his soul. With Anitra, he is suggesting that love and pleasure is a better foundation than a soul. However, although he seems to believe that he is being selfless for the sake of Anitra, hedonism is essentially selfish.

“Statue sang. Words clear; meaning obscure. Obviously a hallucination from first to last. Apart from that, so far today, nothing else of note.”

Peer’s suggestion that the words of the statue are a hallucination speaks to his changing sense of self. Whereas he begins the play with a sense of idealism, convincing himself that the things he imagines are true, he has reached a point in which he is attempting to base his identity in logic. He is rationalizing away the supernatural rather than embracing it.

“People here are one hundred percent themselves. They sail as themselves, full steam ahead. They climb into barrels of self, bung themselves in with self, and pickle themselves in self. No one weeps for others’ suffering. No one cares what others think. Utterly ourselves, in thought, word and deed. We need an emperor—and you’re our man.”

Begriffenfeldt identifies madness (or former madness, as it were) as an act of total indulgence in self. Without considering others or the perspective of others, the inmates have created ridiculous images of themselves that they refuse to compromise. Peer, who has been living for the sake of himself first since he left Solveig in the hut, has unknowingly devoted his life to himself. The state of the madmen suggests that living this way is enough to drive one mad.

“That’s right. Poor people live like that.”

Peer responds to the captain’s claim that the crew members all had families and children with bitterness. After all, Peer never had a wife or family, and no one will be waiting for him with dinner. The captain’s statement that “poor people live like that” (160) highlights the fact that a wife and family was not unattainable for Peer. He does not have one because he chose to pursue wealth and a kingdom. 

“A traitor? No patriot? Perhaps. Up there, in his own small circle, where his work lay, there he was a hero. There he was himself, his metal rang true. His life was one long tune played on muted strings. He fought his own small war, the peasant’s war, and fell.”

The play repeatedly juxtaposes Peer’s life of adventure and loneliness with those who live small, unimportant lives. The priest, who eulogizes the man who cut his finger off, asserts that there was importance to be found in a long, quiet life. There was bravery, as the man carried his children to school when there was no path. He fell at the end because he died, but his life was still worth living and he was still himself. 

“In or out, it’s just as far. This side or that, it’s just as narrow. Time gnaws; the stream divides. ‘Go round,’ said the Bøyg, and so I must.”

Peer has returned to Haegstad, the site of his youthful mistake. Although he is old and nearing the end of his life, he still believes that he must continue to go around rather than through. He continues to see the path back to Solveig, who he has all but forgotten, as impassible since he has long since lost sight of his goals.

“All stories end the same way. When I was a lad, I knew them all.”

Peer refers to the folk stories and lies he used to indulge in in order to give his life meaning. However, at this point he has learned that all lives end in death, and all death results in a destruction of self. Peer is confronted with people he knew in his youth, discovering the self that remains when one is only a memory.

“Poor old devil. Forgot the first rule of showbusiness. Don’t outsmart your audience.”

Throughout his life, Peer has relied on showbusiness and lies. In his story, the Devil shows something real and attempts to pass it off as a trick only to have the audience scoff that the trick looked fake. He raises the question of the nature of reality, and the difference between false and real when something seems real. For Peer, his identity has been built and rebuilt repeatedly out of lies and fabrications, begging the question as to the nature of identity.

“Ha, very fresh: stinks of lies. My eyes are watering. What a lot of layers! Do we never reach the heart? Christ, never! There’s nothing else but layers. Smaller and smaller. Nature’s little joke!”

As Peer peels an onion, he notes that there are only layers and no heart. He is suggesting that a person is like an onion: made up of layers with no essential core. This means that the self is constantly growing new outer coverings, burying without obliterating the old, but there is no static self, nothing to which one can be true. The self is contingent and always changing. Of course, since Peer has been living by the motto “be true to yourself-ish” (81), Perhaps Peer’s identity is more constructed and complicated than those who chose to live singular, straightforward, and small lives.

“No point in staying. Bad enough to bear one’s own sins. Bear the Devil’s too, you’re done for: might as well be six feet under.”

In the forest, Peer hears whispers of the words he never said, the deeds he never did, and the songs he never sang. He also hears his mother’s voice, as she accuses him of abandoning her in the snow. She tells him: “The Devil took over as soon as you picked up that whip” (181). The ghost of Åse is referring to Peer’s journey, which began when he took his mother on an imaginary journey at the end of her life, using an imaginary whip to spur the horses. If the Devil is to blame for the life he missed with Solveig, Peer has no need to feel guilty or to atone. Åse, or perhaps Peer’s imagined manifestation of Åse, gives Peer an excuse for choosing the journey and justifies the things he never experienced.

“To be yourself is to destroy your Self.”

When Peer asks the Button Molder what it means to be yourself, the Button Molder suggests that it requires the destruction of Self, of the idea of a grand, unique, capitalized Self. Placing importance on the self is an exercise in futility, because the search for self will replace the actual experience of life and selfhood. Peer does not understand what the Button Molder is trying to say, instead opting to find another avenue of maintaining self by proving that he deserves to go, intact, to hell. The Button Molder’s version of self is one that is tied with humility and giving up a romanticized view of the self as incontrovertible and absolute.