『종』에 나타난 자유와 사랑 = Freedom and Love in The Bell

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the idea of individual recognition as found in the novel The Bell. This idea is expressed in three ways. First as a failure of opacity of the people who do not do their duty for others or truly love them but rather act out of a desire for recognition by others. Second, it is a pursuit of the spirit which, in the process of understanding the existence of others and loving them, they experience through their failure. Those within the lay community are all dedicated to reaching the highest quality of spiritual experience of which they are capable: "As wise as serpents, as harmless as doves." This spiritual problem forms one of the basic themes of the novel in that the problem of duty as regards spiritual life recurs in the lay sermons preached by James and Michael, the two leading mentors of the community.
Two clear signs exist that James's sermon is antithetical to the implied values of the novel and of the author. First, he opposes the very idea of personality, of preoccupation with self, and merely regards it as "interesting", and, as is pointed out, the assumption of the importance of personality is one of the foundation stones of Murdoch's art. Secondly, Catherine's attempted suicide is directly related to her deeply repressed love for Michael, one almost certainly based, in part, on her knowledge of Michael's prior relationship with her brother. Thus Catherine's seeming innocence and saintliness mask a profoundly complicated and maladjusted personality that erupts in self-destructive violence which necessarily requires treatment.
Michael said, "The chief requirement of the good life is that one should have some conception of one's capacity so that by cunning, introspections and calculation they can learn to take high advantage of their strength and to avoid those situations that pander to their weakness."
This theoretical disagreement between the two natural leaders of the community attains its expression in action at the climax of the novel.
Michael loved Nick intensely, and even though the rules state that sodomy is forbidden, this form of love is implanted in Michael's nature and it must come, however mysteriously, from God. But because he wants to purify himself and keep his own soul untainted, frequently silent, repulsive, tortured gestures come from him.
Michael and Dora are real and unexpected individuals - Michael appears as a homosexual idealist, schoolmaster-cum-priest, a type met often enough before in literature while Dora is a character less easy to absolutely stereotype but possibly much easier to make into a fairly interesting variation on a stock theme of the life-loving girl, not yet grown up, and carelessly ill-behaved.
Michael is Miss Murdoch's first attempt to come to grips with the complex interrelations of religion and morals, freedom and restraint from inside. In Murdoch we have a study of the area where fantasy overlaps the spiritual world, as earlier we have seen fantasy overlapping the aesthetic world and the world of love between humane beings.