A Dolls House Essay

Hal Barry

Mrs, Thompson

August 8, 2017

10 th Lit/Comp 4th period

A Doll’s House Essay

In the play, A Doll’s House, there is a villainous character by the name of Krogstad. He does not have good morals and threatens the protagonist of the story, Nora, with blackmail. Nora took a large loan out of the bank using her father’s name. The only problem was that her father signed the loan two days after his own death and Krogstad knows that Nora forged her father’s signature. Krogstad is in danger of losing his position at the bank to Nora’s friend, Mrs. Linde. He threatens that if he loses his job he will release the information to the public. Without Krogstad’s villainous acts in the story, important events would not have occurred and the outcome of the story would have been very different.

If the circumstances had been different, Krogstad would not have been a villain. He was blackmailing Nora because he was afraid of losing his job. Nora’s husband Torvald is the manager of the bank and would ultimately be the one to fire Krogstad, so he begins threatening Nora so that she can persuade her husband not to fire him. In Act 1, Krogstad says, “But matters of business—such business as you and I have had together…. If I lose my position a second time, you shall lose yours with me” (Ibsen). He then says that if she cannot save his job then he will release information about Nora’s fraud. Krogstad is circumstantially villainous. This means that if he was not motivated by the fear of losing his job he would not have been evil.

Krogstad did eventually get fired from his job at the bank. When he was fired he was furious and went to find Nora. He told Nora that he was going to blackmail Torvald into giving him a better job at the bank and says he will ultimately run the bank. Krogstad warns Nora not to run away or commit suicide because he will still have control over Torvald. He leaves Nora dropping a blackmail letter to Torvald in their mailbox. This frightens Nora because she doesn’t want her husband to find out about her borrowing the money. At the end of the story Krogstad decided to no longer blackmail Nora and Torvald when he said to Mrs. Linde, “I will wait here until Helmer comes; I will tell him he must give me my letter back -- that