에드워드 올비의 『동물원 이야기』에 나타난 의사소통의 부재 연구

Abstract

A Study on the Absence of Communication in The Zoo Story of Albee

Eun-hee Yun Advisor: Prof. Young-kwaun Kim Ph.D. Major in English Language Education Graduate School of Education Chosun University

The paper is an attempt to discuss on the isolation and the loss of the value of the modern man, and moreover, on the way to overcome it through the human contact in the modern society. After the two world wars, the West fell in deep confusion coming from the terror of the wars committed by human beings. People could not escape from the sense of futility and despair, losing the meaning and the direction of life. An attempt to dramatize the spirit of such a pessimistic age was the beginning of absurd dramas. Absurd dramas started in Europe were also written in America and Edward Albee was a representative American absurd drama writer. The difference between Albee's play and the European absurd plays is in that of opposite belief to human beings. In contrast to the European absurdists like Beckett and Ionesco, who extremely bent on hopeless reality, Albee manifests an optimistic vision and the possible human overcoming of isolation. His thought as such is reflected best in his work The Zoo Story. The drama starts from the meeting of Peter who is a typical middle-aged worker blessed with wealth and happy home and Jerry who is a poor and trivial outcast. Jerry and Peter look to live totally different lives but actually both are living an alienated life. Unable to insist on his own thought, Peter lives a passive and mechanical life at work as well as home. Peter's life is alienated and isolated from others without truthful interaction with people. Jerry also lives an isolated life but he recognizes the necessity for truthful contact with others in order to escape from the isolated life. For truthful contact he approaches Peter, Peter who does not want to contact with others, however, distresses Jerry. Jerry discloses to Peter the truth of an isolated life by telling stories about his boarding house, about a dog he met at the house and about his visit to a zoo, and makes efforts to convince him of the necessity of truthful contact with others in order to overcome the isolated life. Nevertheless Peter does not read Jerry's intention to the end. Jerry, thinking that he failed in contact through words, attempts bodily contact. Jerry tries to take away a bench, which has been Peter's nest, and Peter resists desperately not to be deprived of his only resting place. At last Jerry draws a knife and throws himself to the knife. By his death Jerry comes into a truthful contract with Peter and liberates Peter from the bench into which he has been isolated. In The Zoo Story, Albee tells us the isolated lives of modern Americans who refuse the real communication with others. In the play Albee insists that the absurdity of human isolation can be overcome through the real contact. To him, illusion prevents the correct decision about reality only when a man cuts himself off from the reality of his situation, does he lose his humanity and become absurd. Albee's assertion is that the illusions of modern man are induced from convention and selfishness, it deepen isolation rather than allows human contacts. Albee presents the necessity to face reality in order to escape illusion. In conclusion, Albee asserts that the human situation can be changed by genuine human effort aiming to improve it.