스토파드의 『곡예사들』에 나타난 리얼리티의 양상

Abstract

The Aspects of Reality in Stoppard's Jumpers In Jumpers, Stoppard uses the structure of mystery drama as a fundamental theatrical one. Generally speaking, in a traditional mystery drama where a murder case is the main dramatic action, it is essential to find the murderer. However, in Jumpers, the murderer is not clearly identified; rather, the attempt to detect the murderer is reduced to being meaningless. Stoppard purposefully breaks away form the fixed interpretation, and disperses the audience's attention to all of the suspected characters. In a word, he doesn't seek a traditional 'closed interpretation' performed solely by the author but pursues an 'open interpretation' accomplished by both the author and the audience or readers. In Jumpers, Stoppard takes advantage of the effect of 'montage'. He doesn't explore absolute truth or reality, but focuses on the reality partially revealed by fragmentary or broken facts. Also, he tries to demonstrate that 'the reality becomes more obvious through the inflection of meaning provided by the broken debris'. Basically, he isn't bound to the existing conception of reality, but tries to find out a new possibility of reality by exploring a variety of meanings. The relativity of reality gained by diversification of meanings becomes a foundation of his unique theatrical esthetics. As Jumpers deals with a variety of politically and ethically disputable arguments including the deep search of human nature in a technicist world, it can be explained in many ways. Stoppard doesn't make a clear statement as to a given question but presents the development of repeated logic by showing ceaseless refutation. In conclusion, Jumpers not only develops Stoppard's dramatic themes perfectly well but also embodies his idea of reality.