선(善)에 이르는 길 - 아이리스 머독의 『바다여, 바다여』를 중심으로 = On Toward the Goodness in Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Morality is a centering subject in Iris Murdoch’s works and the ethical perspective of what is the goodness is deeply implicit in her literary as well as philosophical works published during the 1970s. Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea is a philosophical and religious novel with full of mysticism and hermoral vision from the perspective of good and evil is explored in it. Though thenarrator is Charles who is a retired theatre director, his cousin, James, areligious mystic with Buddhist beliefs, becomes the focus for the moral and religious thought in the novel. Though Charles has achieved worldly success heis a deeply frustrated man who is an egotist and lacks moral concepts. James tries to help him to renounce his solipsism implying a moral vision of the essential goodness.
The question of goodness in The Sea, The Sea is related not only with the subject of solipsism but also with that of power. For Charles an art has become a “magic" or “trick" and a means of wielding his power. James tells Charles that the core of goodness lies in giving up power surrendering his “magic". But as Murdoch referred to him, James is a “lost soul" too. James has confessed Charles he sacrificed a Sherpa's life in the process of exercising his paranormal power for his own worldly use. Like Charles, James has an experience of attempting a magic(a trick) and power for others in his own way. But James fully recognizes the danger of exercising power and understands its consequences. At the end of the novel Charles adopts James's position toward the goodness though the traces of his old self still remains.