Free Summarizer
Daily · Classics

An Enemy of the People

Henrik Ibsen · stage play, 1882·3 hrs in the original·original at gutenberg.org
The 30‑second version3 hrs → 47 sec
  • The discovery: Dr. Stockmann receives laboratory proof that the Baths' water supply is contaminated by runoff from a tannery, posing a serious public-health danger to the visitors the town depends on for its prosperity.
  • Official suppression: His brother Peter, the Mayor, argues that repairing the system would cost twenty thousand pounds and close the Baths for two years, and demands that Stockmann publicly retract his findings or face dismissal.
  • The collapse of allies: The editor Hovstad, the printer Aslaksen, and the Householders' Association all abandon Stockmann once they grasp the financial cost, and at a public meeting the crowd votes unanimously to brand him an enemy of the people.
  • The majority speech: At the meeting Stockmann delivers a provocative address arguing that the compact majority is always wrong, that received truths decay into lies, and that the individual conscience of a minority must resist the cowardice of the crowd.
  • Defiant resolution: Dismissed, evicted, his windows smashed, and his family's inheritance threatened by his father-in-law's manipulation of Bath shares, Stockmann refuses every compromise and declares he will educate a new generation of free-minded citizens from his wrecked home.
Summarized by FreeSummarizer.com

•Why it earns a slot

The play is a landmark dramatization of the conflict between individual truth-telling and collective self-interest, and its central paradox, that a man who serves his community can be destroyed by it for doing so, gave the phrase 'enemy of the people' its enduring political resonance.

Dr. Thomas Stockmann discovers that the celebrated Baths of his Norwegian coastal town are contaminated with deadly bacteria, but when he tries to expose the truth he is systematically abandoned by his brother the Mayor, the liberal press, and the townspeople, who vote to declare him an enemy of the people. Stripped of his post, his income, and his home, Stockmann refuses to recant and resolves to stay and fight, concluding that the strongest man is he who stands most alone.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.

Want the 30-second version of your own documents?

Summarize Pro batches your PDFs, papers and reports into this exact format, every key claim cited to its source page.

Open Summarize Pro →

More documents worth knowing

The Yellow Wallpaper/daily/the-yellow-wallpaperThe Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/daily/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hydeHeart of Darkness/daily/heart-of-darknessA Christmas Carol/daily/a-christmas-carol