Peer Gynt Characters Analysis

Peer Gynt is a play created by Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwriter, during the year 1867. The story was named after the play’s main character, Peer Gynt and his journey from idleness and frivolous daydreaming, into a life of adventure as he embarks on a series of fantasy-filled conquests full of monsters, elves, and directionless pursuits.

All his life, he lived a life of different personalities and characters, chasing one senseless adventure to the other. Tired of all his careless exploits, he eventually decides on returning back to Norway, only to be reunited with a woman who has shown him love and devotion throughout the years.

The story is filled with illusory individuals, making it a colorful play that offers different projections of fantasy that revolves around the main character and his journeys.

An Analysis of Peer Gynt’s Main Characters

Peer Gynt

The story’s main character, Peer Gynt, is a lazy daydreamer whose mind is filled with fairytale characters and make-believe adventures. After starting a life away from home, he suffers from one mishap to the other while displaying different personalities including a businessman, prophet, chief, emperor and wanderer.

He eventually gets weary from all his travels and eventually decided to come back to his little town in Norway, only to be confronted by the Button-Moulder, claiming he lives his life with no sense of self and identity.

Aase

She is Peer’s mother and a wife of a once-rich man, who eventually became a drunkard known for wasting money and leaving absolutely nothing left for his family. A loving and caring mother who help keep her son’s feet on the ground, she is solely responsible for keeping Peer’s reality on the check on many different occasions in the story.

Aase is quick to reprimand her son whenever he commits mistakes. She portrays a character of an endearing mother who wouldn’t think twice about scolding Peer once she knows he gets involved in another trouble due to his own carelessness.

Solveig 

She is Peer’s love interest

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