Literary works exemplify significance and develop their message by utilizing recurring and parallel events. Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is one such play of literary merit in which the main character attempts to recreate her past through material possessions and mimicry. Intending to reenact her life as the daughter of the famous General Gabler and a child used to luxury and high-class living, Hedda attempts to base her future with a suitable husband and a villa to be of the proper class. Ultimately, Hedda establishes a replica of her past through the recreation of past moments. Through the recurring events related to pistols in Hedda Gabler, the audience is able to see the connection Hedda wants to keep with her past and what lengths she will go to to maintain her same life and social status.
Hedda’s pistols are introduced in act one when Thea tells of her conversation with Lovborg about “someone...from his past” (24). This “someone he’s never managed to forget” told Thea that “they parted when [the woman] threatened to shoot him with a pistol” (24). Hedda
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Her endeavor fails, however, so she decides to enact her threats from the past. Hedda gives Lovborg the pistol and urges him to recognize it as the one from that night. He responds, “You should have used it that night” and Hedda turns the past into the present, offering for him to “use it now” (67). Hedda is hoping to see Lovborg as a man not restricted by society again, to recapture a glimpse of the past. She is able to replicate her past momentarily when Lovborg says goodbye to Hedda using her maiden name, “Goodbye, Hedda Gabler” (67). This recurrence of pistol imagery is a final, significant event in the play as it marks the moment in which Hedda briefly feels she is the person she once