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The Affect of Forgiveness and Mourning in Rabbit Hole

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2023, 36(1), pp.88-122
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : February 24, 2023
  • Accepted : April 6, 2023
  • Published : April 30, 2023

Choi, Sunghee 1

1부산대학교 인문학연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

While David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hall is well known as a drama of mourning, this paper focuses on the relationship between mourning and forgiveness and considers how the difficulty of mourning depicted in this play is resolved through the affect of forgiveness. To this end, I approach forgiveness as an affect, comparing the contents of the play Rabbit Hall written in 2006 with its extension, the film Rabbit Hall released in 2010, and the difference of thought on mourning between Freud and Derrida, and mainly with reference to Derrida’s theory of forgiveness. Derrida’s theory of forgiveness starts with examples of public forgiveness, but it can be seen that the “unconditional forgiveness” that he argues can also be effectively applied to the case of private forgiveness depicted in Rabbit Hall. It is her encounter with Jason that makes a new difference to the impasse of Becca’s mourning, which seems to have no way out of the “rabbit hole.” Becca finally begins to mourn her son properly by finding, meeting, listening to, and walking with Jason. The meeting between the two shows that the mourning is not an independent affect, but is conducted in conjunction with other affects, especially with that of forgiveness. Both versions of Rabbit Hole constitute a work that captures and shows very delicately how mourning and forgiveness are closely linked to each other and work together.

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