The play also questions the ethics of euthanasia, as to its permissibility in an inevitable situation like this. Alving’s last ray of hope gets shattered here. It reverberates the doctor’s saying:”The sins of fathers shall be visited on the children.” It is indeed heart-rending that Mr. Oswald in spite of all his modern notions confesses to his mother:”Mother, I have never led a dissipated life. He illustrates how the victim even though totally blameless, can be subject to venereal disease.
Ibsen deals with the taboo topics of venereal disease and euthanasia in a new light. Ibsen always asserted how mankind could be redeemed “by exposing the corpse that infects the cargo of modern life.” Pastor Manders’ decision to help Engstrand to begin a Home for Sailors that is a brothel house in disguise highlights the underlying hypocrisy in the pastor’s teachings. An unlearned person like Engstrand has a better perception of morality in that he comprehends that saving a falling woman at the cost of a lie uttered, is in good spirits than adhering to superficial ideals of morality. It is contrasted with the selfish love of Regina to foreground the former, where the latter hails the “joy of living”, it reigning supreme. The consequences that she meets with are ‘Ghosts’ haunting her in the form of the depression of solitude, the immoral stand of her disease-ridden son and the burning of her dreamsin the form of Mr.Alving’s home. Alving is the so-called Nora who does not bang the door on selfless love and does not shun social dictates and continues in the garb of the “perfect wife”. The play holds a special relevance in the world of today as it relates with the contemporary times. It presents the conflict between social dictums and individual choice, marriage and living-in, euthanasia and venereal disease, and selfless love and selfish love. It blends an assortment of themes together. Ibsen’s “Ghosts” is a slap on the face of those critics who questioned the stand of Nora in A Doll’s House.
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