Nora—and most of the other characters—inherit “moral disease” from their fathers, who are associated throughout the play with “abandon- ment, illness, absence, and corruption” (Rosefeldt n.p.). Dr. Rank's fortune, however, is the one exception because it will sustain Nora's independence after his death.
But he's got a terrible disease – he's got spinal tuberculosis, poor man. His father was a frightful creature who kept mistresses and so on. As a result Dr. Rank has been sickly ever since he was a child…
In the final moments of clarity she has at the end of the play, Nora claims that she has been “wronged greatly” by her father, who ensured that “nothing's become of [her]” because he constantly exposed her to his opinions and forced his views upon her (Ibsen 1015).
This man, Nils Krogstad, is the person from whom Nora has borrowed her money. It is then revealed that she forged her father's signature in order to get the money.
Nora discreetly explains that several years ago, when Torvald Helmer was very ill, she forged her dead fathers signature in order to illegally obtain a loan. Since then, she has been paying back the loan in secret. She has never told her husband because she knows it would upset him.
Nora procured money and told Torvald that her father gave it to them, though she really raised it herself. Nora's father died before Torvald had a chance to find out that the money didn't come from him. Nora has kept the source of the money a secret because she doesn't want his “man's pride” to be hurt.
There is a little subtlety, Nora not only got this loan behind Torvald's back, but in the legal process of obtaining it, she was forced, due to the circumstances, to forge a signature so that she could get the money in time to save her husband's life.
Krogstad reveals that he can prove she borrowed the 250 pounds from him by forging her father's signature. Her situation was desperate when she needed the money, Nora explains.
Nora's abandonment of her children can also be interpreted as an act of self- sacrifice. Despite Nora's great love for her children—manifested by her interaction with them and her great fear of corrupting them—she chooses to leave them.
Having borrowed money from a man of ill- repute named Krogstad by forging her father's signature, she was able to pay for a trip to Italy to save her sick husband's life (he was unaware of the loan, believing that the money came from Nora's father).
Nora is a victim of the male-dominated society of the nineteenth century. To save her husband, Torvald, she borrows money so that he might be able to recover from a life-threatening illness in a warmer climate.
The macaroons come to represent Nora's disobedience and deceit.
Torvald Helmer
He treats Nora like a child, in a manner that is both kind and patronizing. He does not view Nora as an equal but rather as a plaything or doll to be teased and admired.
At first, Nora's interaction with Dr. Rank is similarly manipulative. When she flirts with him by showing her stockings, it seems that she hopes to entice Dr. Rank and then persuade him to speak to Torvald about keeping Krogstad on at the bank.
He has tuberculosis of the spine. This could possibly be meant to represent the diseased backbone of unenlightened society, a society where men and women don't live as equals. His death also could be seen as symbolic.
Dr. Rank, a rich friend of the family, greatly differs from the other characters of the story. In fact, he seems to truly love Nora and shows his sincere feelings endlessly to the woman.
While he thinks that such a bad character is in direct contrast to his “sweet little Nora,” we are aware that Krogstad and Nora have committed exactly the same crime—forgery.
Krogstad betrays Nora by failing to keep the secret about the loan he had advanced her. When Helmer is promoted to the managerial position in the bank, he threatens to fire Krogstad, who also works in the bank, claiming that he is corrupt and he describes him as morally diseased.
Nora is forbidden from eating macaroons by Torvald. Although Nora claims to have never disobeyed Torvald in the very beginning of the play when she eats Macamuffins alone in her living room, this is proved false when she eats them. Macaroons are symbolic of Nora's behavior and deception.
Paras had revealed on the reality show that he was a fan of Nora and had a crush on her.
It was immoral for Nora to borrow money from Krogstad, because he had worked for Torvald and was a criminal. c. It was illegal for Nora to borrow money under her own name, so to save Torvald's life she had to forge her father's signature on the loan.
Being herself far from naive, she reproaches Nora for having borrowed the money from Dr. Rank to pay for Torvald's rest cure in Italy. Emphatically the girl denies it, for, she says, she would never allow herself placed in such a "horribly painful position" toward their old friend.
While Dr. Rank was never married, and, it is revealed, has silently loved Nora for years.
Nora says that she realizes that she is childlike and knows nothing about the world. She feels alienated from both religion and the law, and wishes to discover on her own, by going out into the world and learning how to live life for herself, whether or not her feelings of alienation are justified.
While Krogstad initially does try to blackmail Nora, he has a more complicated backstory and eventually relents. Krogstad's motives and circumstances are of no interest to Nora and Torvald at this point in the play; how one appears to others is all that matters.