Enemy of the People

An Enemy of the People, an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, followed his previous play, Ghosts, which criticized the hypocrisy of his society's moral code. The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "e;enemies"e; in question are acting against the larger group, for example against society. An Enemy of the People tells the story of a man who dares to speak an unpalatable truth and is punished for it. However, Ibsen took a somewhat sceptical view of his protagonist, suggesting that he may have gone too far in his zeal to tell the truth.