Tennessee Williams 의 The Night of the Iguana에 나타난 신화적 요소

Shannon in The Night of the Iguana has none to blame but himself to become a wanderer, resulted in the treachery against God, and is the very personified copy of Orestes, searching his substance between God and himself. It is still fortunate that Hannah has a great contribution to setting up right Shannon's erroneous con-cept of God, who is regarded as a furious being, brutal, merciless, and full of vengeance; and to ultimately bringing tranquility back in his mind. Shannon at first has a very strong denial of God whom he considers to be a 'Senile delinquent' pinning anathema and abhorrence on man, possibly wrongly created by God himself. He on the other hand has found peace in mind, by thinking himself to be an iguana, 'One of God's Creature,' and through incessant dialogs with Hannah. He also gains somewhat Hindu spiritual serenity through the preference of having poppy tea, but finally becomes merely Maxine's sex partner leaving his will or mental investigation behind unaccomplished. Shannon settles down at Costa Verde abandoning the mental probation, leading him to the immeasurable pain. Shannon's forsaking any effort to inspect the inner world of human beings and choosing a physical and material life can be seen through symbolized Orestes and Iguana. Williams offers, by means of Christian and Hindu mythologies, some suggestions about the mortal' s fundamental problems - isolation, atheism, and death. He seems to endeavor to prepare for the audience some opportunity to find out a desir-able clue to the social problems at that time, instead of indicating some hints of his own. It seems proper and appropriate that he adapts a mythological method in order to realize this goal. Consequently Williams must be estimated as such a playwright who suggests, by applying an ancient myth to the current social circumstances, a true humanness to promise the eternal suvival in the corrupted society full of a desire for material gain, and introduces a far more purified one.