In "When We Dead Awaken," the playwright attempts to unravel a probing discourse on his own activity: that of the creator. The question of the true value of Art - its power to make human life more bearable - gnaws at the soul of the elderly Ibsen.
"Listen... how I placed myself within the complex. In front of a spring... sits a man full of guilt who has not yet fully emerged from the earth... He dips and re-dips his hands in the running water - to purify them -, hunches over and is tormented by the thought that he will never, ever succeed... Eternally he will burn in his own hell."