An Enemy of the People portrays a Norwegian town that has just built, at great expense, a complex of baths that will attract visitors and invalids (at the time, thermal baths were thought to cure a variety of illnesses) and turn the town into a wealthy tourist destination. In the play’s first scene, Dr. Thomas Stockmann discovers that the water in the baths is fundamentally contaminated by chemicals from nearby tanneries. At first, this seems to be a purely scientific problem, easily fixed by repairs. However, as the baths are so firmly linked with the town’s collective goals and hopes for itself, this contamination becomes an indication of public character. Dr. Stockmann finds that those around him are hostile to his findings and indeed willing to let visitors be poisoned in order to preserve the town’s money-making enterprise; these people, he decides, are as corrupt as the water he’s studied. At the end of the play, Dr. Stockmann announces that his scientific discovery was only the prelude to a more important moral one, that the unfettered power of the majority is the source of all social contamination. In his words, the baths become a physical symbol of what he sees as the town’s moral lapses.
The Baths Quotes in An Enemy of the People
Mr. Aslaksen: I am a man with a conscience, and that is the whole matter. If you attack the government, you don’t do the community any harm, anyway; those fellows pay no attention to attacks, you see—they go on just as they are, in spite of them. But local authorities are different; they can be turned out, and then perhaps you may get an ignorant lot into office who may do irreparable harm to the householders and everybody else.
Peter Stockmann. The proprietors of the Baths are not in a position to incur any further expense.
Aslaksen. Is that absolutely certain, Mr. Mayor?
Peter Stockmann. I have satisfied myself that it is so. If the town wants these very extensive alterations, it will have to pay for them.
The Baths Symbol Timeline in An Enemy of the People
