Word: symbolic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...room been so important to a play, for here also resides the wild duck, shot in the wing and brought up from "the depths of the sea," now tenderly cared for by Hedvig, Hjalmer's 14-year-old daughter. The wild duck (which also remains unseen) becomes the central symbol of the play--for Hedvig, for Hjalmer, and for the Ekdal family as a whole. Into this tranquil little world blunders the well-meaning but clumsy idealist Gregers, whose efforts to clear away the "swamp gases" of deceit and in its place erect a "foundation of truth" only...
...ultimately it is the character of Dr. Relling, the Ekdals' cynical, dissipated neighbor, who becomes the dominating symbol of this production. Foil and foe to Gregers, profoundly contemptuous of the latter's lofty "claims of the ideal," convinced that the average man or family (like the Ekdals) needs lies and illusions, not ideals, to survive, the worldweary doctor is played effectively--almost too effectively--by Jack Willis, who cuts a Jack Nicholson-like figure with his sardonic drawl and menacing animus towards Gregers. His is the image that lasts, the voice that crowds out the others and cuts down even...
Atrue solution must steer between these two extremes. There are many possibilities, but at least three elements must be present: First, houses should mandate that no religious symbol can be placed in a common space without a word of explanation as to its meaning. What is the symbolism of the Christmas tree? Why does a Kwaanza lamp have seven branches? Why does a Hanukkah menorah have nine? I doubt if anyone (myself included) can answer all three of these questions, despite the fact that all three of these symbols will be seen around campus in the coming weeks. Part...
...detector tests, which he says can be used to refute some of the CIA's claims. The affidavit against Nicholson already contains at least one apparently inflated charge. It accuses him of selling to the Russians the name of the CIA station chief in Moscow. But as a symbol of warming ties, the U.S. and Russia actually inform one another these days of the identities of their spy chiefs in their respective capitals...
...there has been any consolation for proud Russian scientists, it's that these problems have occurred out of sight of Western eyes. But the space agency--long a symbol of Russian technical prowess and widely considered to be the best in the world as recently as the late 1980s--could not slip so quietly into eclipse...