Mad(wo)man in “A Prison of Memories” : Escape Through or From Madness?

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines the process by which Cobb, the protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film, Inception, attains self-awareness and thereby overcomes his morbid obsession with his dead wife, Mal. Analyzing Cobb’s pathological relationship with Mal in light of Charlotte Brontë’s depiction of a madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre, this essay contends that Cobb has imprisoned not only Mal but also himself in a “prison of memories” because of his inability to accept the truth that he neither loves her nor desires her presence with him any longer. In Jane Eyre, Jane achieves escape from an oppressive patriarchal power not through her own madness but through Bertha’s madness, demonstrating her lack of agency as a Victorian woman. In contrast, in Inception, Cobb manages to liberate himself from a prison of memories of his own construction by being honest about his possibly selfish yet fundamentally human desire to turn away from his dead wife. Although the movie deliberately leaves it ambiguous whether or not the children he returns to at the end are his “real” children, it is clear that with enhanced self-awareness, Cobb is now better prepared to love his children in the realm of existence which is free from the presence of the projection of a dead person.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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