Bernard Pomerance THE ELEPHANT MAN : It's Reality and Dramatic Structure 그 眞實과 形式 = Bernard Pomerance's THE ELEPHANT MAN

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The report is to disclose what THE ELEPHANT MAN really is (= its reality) and find out what dramatic structure it is enclosed in, of it.
By analyzing the play THE ELEPHANT MAN, it is found that 'the elephant man' is a symbol of the absurdity in which every man is confined to strive for existence. Bernard Pomerance, 'a young American playwright of this play named a man bound to this absurd human condition 'the elephant man'. He is, therefore, a disclosed symbol of the reality of human condition, the absurdity itself, which accordingly is to be the main subject of this play. This absurdity, as it usually is, is due to the ambivalent interaction of the two contrapuntal elements coexistent in one entity: in this play, the inner conflict of Deformity vs. Normality in 'the elephant man'(John Merrick).
'The elephant man' is a horribly deformed young man that makes the other men unbearable to look at. (the refusal of facing reality) . This deformity of his outer appearance signifies the severity of his inner agony or torture attributed to his absurd condition of life innately given him and uncontrolably bound to. Contrasting to this, his inner sense as a human being is completely normal.
Pomerance encloses this reality (the subject of the play) with the brilliancy of his dramatic skill in the structure of this play as a whole, which distinguishes him from his contemporaries.
Outside of this inner ambivalence in the elephant man, there is another circle of counterbalancing conflict which consists a stream of actions of this play; the conflict between the elephant man and Treves who stands against Merrick as an ambivalent force. Treves is a charactor whose appearance is quite normal yet in his depth-of his mind there thrives all sort of deformities that the average men in Normality could involve in them. These two charactors perform an incessant counterpuntal interactions through the whole actions of the play (the total 21 scense) by which one is transfigured into the other: Treves, the doctor into the elephant man (Normality into Deformity) and the elephant man into Troves (Deformity into Normality). By this dramatic reversal (peripeteia) performed by means of dream images, Treves, whose normality being the cause of keeping him from the others 'agonies, lastly can be made to feel the others feel and recognise all that he had given to the others (mainly to the elephant man) in fact, had taken (robbed) . (anagnorisis) He, after all, begins to experience the same agony the other deformed feels. (pathos) Simultaneously ,the elephant man Merrick ends his life and can finally escape from his confinement of human condition, and thus it signifies the endless cycle of absurd human condition in which the beginning and the end coexist.
Pomerance, the author of this play, by skilfully establishing the poetic images encloses its reality with the traditional form of theatre and gives his work of THE ELEPHANTMAN a greatness worthy of winning all the major drama awards, including three Tonys, three Obies, the Drama Desk Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award at its first production (1979).

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 序論 및 硏究目的
• Ⅱ. '엘리판트 맨' 이란 씸볼의 특징
• Ⅲ. 극의 全體的 構造上의 특징
• A. The Circular Structure
• B. The Devaluation of legic
• C. Reality Vs. Illusion
• D. Reversal and Recognition
• Ⅳ. 結論