John Gabriel Borkman Book

Rebuilding Shattered Reputations
20 June 2020

I've said enough about my opinion of reading plays, and I have also mentioned it enough times that half the reason I end up reading plays is that many of them you rarely, if ever, get to see. For instance, I have only ever seen on Ibsen play performed, and that one was in London, and it was only because the National Theatre decided to play it in cinemas around the world that I was able to watch it (though I do sort of get the impression that Ibsen is often performed in London). Okay, if I went to Norway maybe I would have a better chance of actually seeing one of these plays performed, though that sort of creates another problem - I can't speak Norwegian.

Anyway, I'll do my best with recounting this play, despite them being rather difficult to follow straight off the bat (though, for some reason, I do manage to be able to follow Shaw's plays, and Shakespeare's, though in the case of Shakespeare that probably has a lot to do with them being readily available, and regularly performed). So, this is the second to last of Ibsen's plays, though Wikipedia suggests that it sort of falls into his middle period. That, in my mind, sounds a little odd namely because there is only one play after this one to fall into his later period.

The story is about the titular character, who ended up in prison for fraud. He happens to be a bank manager, and he decided to engage in some speculative investments with other people's money. Mind you, that doesn't seem to be all that odd these days, particularly since that is basically what hedge funds are supposed to do, and hell, banks do that as well. In fact, if there is one thing that we learnt from the Global Financial Crisis, and that is that bankers don't go to gaol for fraud, or at least they don't when they happen to be running the joint, and also happen to be working on Wall Street. Okay, a couple did, but there is a word for people like that - Fall Guys.

Maybe that is what Borkman was, a fall guy. Maybe it was the case that the bank lost a lot of money and they decided to find somebody to take the blame, and unfortunately, Borkman drew the short straw. Well, interestingly the story is actually set eight years after Borkman was released (and fraudsters generally land up in gaols that are colloquially referred to a Country Clubs, namely because it is pretty easy going in these places, except for the fact that you still basically can't leave and go to the pub for a beer, though it wouldn't really surprise me if that did actually happen).

Mind you, the story is more about the family's desire for a comeback, and that certainly does happen in the world of high finance. Borkman wants to be the one to make the comeback, despite the fact that he has been disgraced, whereas his wife has decided that maybe the best person to do this is their son. Another thing that seems to stick out here is the fact that they seem to be sheltered up in their house, the fact that Borkman is a pariah means that they rarely, if ever, go out.

Well, there is family drama, and Ibsen is certainly one for family drama, except that he decides to ratchet it up somewhat by bringing in Borkman's wife's twin sister. That wouldn't be too much of a concern, if it wasn't for the fact that he was also in love with her. However, the idea is that he was given a choice between playing happy families, or becoming a big fish in Norway. Well, he chose to become a big fish, but not surprisingly it all came crashing down around him. This sort of reminds me of a number of movies that you see every so often in Hollywood. Basically they have a choice between making it big or living the simple life, and the story always ends with them living the simple life.

Yeah, that would be all well and good if it was at all possible to live the simple life these days. Sure, we can certainly work to resist the temptation to live a consumerist culture, but the problem is that these days it costs an awful lot of money to simply live the simple life, let alone the high life. However, these films are right, and this is what Ibsen is trying to explore here, and that is the high life doesn't always bring the rewards that it promises. Here Borkman ended up committing fraud and paid for it, and he did this so that his family could have nice things. Yet, the other thing was that there is this issue with the sister, and him turning away from her because of his choices. In the end though, and this seems to be a common theme, is that the decision to live the high life simply didn't end well for Borkman - he ended up poor, alienated, and disrespected by those around him.

Unfortunately, though, it really does seem that a lot of these high fliers seem to escape justice somehow. There was this guy in Australia named Christopher Skase, and he basically ran up a heap of debt to run this huge media conglomerate which turned out to be a house of cards. Well, when it all came crashing down, he basically scarpered off to Majorca in the Mediterranean and lived a life of luxury in a seaside mansion, all the while Australia was trying, and failing, to get him extradited. Yeah, even when the Spanish finally agreed to extradite him, he suddenly developed emphysema and was too sick to travel.

Yeah, that is just one example, and I'm sure there are plenty of others out there, particularly among the political class.