미국 희곡 속에 나타난 자살의 문제 - 아서 밀러의 극을 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to interpret the essence of suicide, which is the unknown for we cannot experience it, through the various aspects of suicide depicted in literature, such as in Miller’s plays. Although suicide has been considered a subject of fear and taboo throughout most of history, literature, which is often referred to as a mirror of human history, has seriously dealt with suicide as a form of death, the eternal enigma of human existence, even during the periods when suicide was not permitted. As a result, suicide currently has become one of the most prominent interests in literature. Though suicide in literature is fictional, it embraces various mechanisms of actual suicide and symbolically represents existential problems originating from the agony of the period, irregularities and corruption in our society, and frustration and despair due to damage to an individual’s value and dignity. Therefore, we can indirectly understand the cause, process, and effect of suicide in the real world. Many cases of suicide are introduced particularly in Miller’s plays. Through such cases, he charges the individual, the people around him, and the society with responsibility for one’s ruin caused by the alienation, one of the social ills in a modern materialistic civil society.