Devious

de.vi.ous (dee-vee-uhs)

-adjective

1. not straightforward; shifty or crooked: a devious scheme to accquire wealth


Probably my favorite character of the play. Brack continually moves in an somewhat underhanded manner to gain more power. He is always trying to be "the one cock of the walk" (303). He starts his bid for power pretty early, when he returns to the Tesman residence, by "gently taking the pistol out of her hand" (248), symbolically taking the power out of Hedda's hands.

Photo: Steven Siewert

His quest for power continues when he attempts to get Lovborg to come to his stag party, but fails when Lovborg declines to attend. Here he gets a bit of good luck through Hedda, because she drives Lovborg back to the sauce, and ultimately to the party that night. Brack completes his power struggle when he finds out through a police man that presumably owes him a favor, that Eilert was shot with one of Hedda's pistols. This gives Brack power over Hedda, whom I believe was who he wanted control of the most.

On a side note, I wonder if we would be pronouncing Brack with a long A sound or a short A sound if it weren't an election year.