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Journey for True Self through Puppet Plays: Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2016, 29(2), pp.5-26
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Meekyeong Kim 1

1상지대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper is to study a possibility of healing drama for children characters who are faced with crisis and conflict from dysfunctional family on the way to the grandma’s. Dad is thinking of another lady, to whom he becomes addicted and buys many kinds of presents to try to gain the favor of hers. Mom is constantly doubtful of her husband and studies his pleasures even though she knows his wrongful acts. And their three children, Rebecca, Stephen, and Claire are constantly arguing one another in a car. It’s freezing cold outside and one day after Christmas, The Feast of Saint Stephen. These three children are being manipulated by puppeteers because children are made of puppets. This puppet play is influenced by Japanese traditional Bunraku puppet play. According to the Bunraku tradition, Bunraku puppet play has artistic and characteristic effects by manipulating one puppet with three puppeteers. Their delicate movements enlighten the general spectators with superbly dramatic style, and give them emotional highs and lows. However, Paula Vogel uses Bunraku puppet play as a simplified style focused on some kind of shock and awakening, which makes it look different from the Westerners’ notions. Bunraku puppet play also functions as a meta drama. On the Christmas service, the minister shows church members Japanese slides concerning artworks in Edo period in Japan, and Stephen is enthralled by Japanese everyday’s common beauty, especially Ukiyo-E, the floating world. He realizes that life is fleeting but beautiful, only after his death from AIDS 15 years later. He is granted to visit this living world as a ghost on the Feast of Stephen’s Day, once in a year. And not until he passes away, he recognizes the real beauty of ordinary life and prevents his two sisters from being dead, one from being frozen to death, the other from suicide. In the meantime, The Long Christmas Ride Home shows possibilities of healing the past scars from dysfunctional family by using a technique of ‘summoning up the past memory’. The children have unconsciously tried to avoid the most violent scene of their dad’s ever since their family trip on Christmas. But the late Stephen recognizes the distance and perspective of seeing the beauty of life and art by understanding Ukiyo-E, the floating world. Therefore he realizes value of life and starts journey for true self. On the other hands, he helps his sisters find the beauty in the Here and Now, and continue their lives, which means new possibilities of healing the past scars.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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