Essay examples --

Logically, a contradiction consists of opposition between two conflicting ideas. Therefore, human contradiction would be opposing oneself to another person by saying or doing the opposite of whatever he or she says. A person should not say one thing and then turn around do another. Actions should be external representations of a person’s internal motives and be non-contradictory. Henrik Ibsen’s characters Aslaksen, Billing, Hovstad, Mayor Peter Stockmann and Morten Kiil are wonderful examples of human contradictions because they undergo complete identity reversals from which they start with. These five characters are special representatives of the community that are supposed to have the good of the community at heart. In reality, they use scientific and factual truth for personal gain and biased motives instead of the good of the community. There is a sense of diversity in the often contradictory motives that affect all human behavior. Ibsen came to change his technique of writing throughout his career from non-dramatic to dramatic. It would not be bad a contradiction, except for his reasoning behind it. He seems to change his writing with hope that a more dramatic technique might attract more people to his writings, enabling him to convey his thoughts and visions much more publically and in a more conventional manner. Unlike most authors that emphasized plot and intrigue at the time, Ibsen subtly inserted views contradictory to that of people at the time. He showed those contradictions of people in the ways in which they behaved and tried to think, especially in stressful situations like the ones that are created by Doctor Stockmann and other characters in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. The characters become inconsistent, m... ... does not have the community’s best interest at heart like he should. He offers Doctor Stockmann social and financial security as well as a short term exile if only the Doctor leaves the subject alone and retracts everything that he has said thus far. He also offers in return to the Doctor the ability to be reinstated at a later time. So really he has no change in heart, nor in contradiction since he suffers no change. In conclusion, each of these five characters that are somehow important to the community goes through a human contradiction or multiple ones. In comparison to Doctor Stockmann who remains steadfast in his ideals of ‘nothing but the truth is good enough,’ each of these characters has an ugly internal contradiction to what their external actions should be. Nothing is done for the good of the people, but what is good for each person’s individual gains.