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The Meaning of Julian's Death in Tiny Alice

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2007, 20(2), pp.127-153
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

이현주 1

1감리교신학대

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Lee, HyunjuTiny Alice is considered as the most controversial and intellectual one among all of Edward Albee's plays because it is filled with philosophical concepts. Especially, Plato's allegory of the cave is the basic symbol of this play. In this play Albee tries to find the relation between representative and the truth itself(In this play the truth is called Alice, al theia in Greek). He believes that there are many layered representatives of truth and each representative, the shadow of the truth, is shown differently according to the person who sees it.Julian is a lay brother who creates his own God, believing that the established God is only a man-made image. He is a man who confuses the representative of a thing(the symbol) with the thing itself(the substance). He lives with an illusion that his own religion is the ultimate one and the others' are false. MISS ALICE, LAWYER and BUTLER, surrogates of Alice, invite Julian into their castle which has infinite replicas. And they try to enforce him to recognize the fact that everything we believe or see is only the representative and the shadow of the truth. Julian comes to recognize this truth only through the act, dying not the conception, of death. And the heart beating sounds in the last death scene lets the audience think about this truth, too. In this sense, Julian becomes a martyr of Alice.

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