도둑맞은 흰 코끼리 , 그 잃어버린 의미를 찾아서: 도둑맞은 편지 와 비교를 중심으로

In Search for Lost Meaning in “The Stolen White Elephant” and “The Purloined Letter”

Mark Twain’s “The Stolen White Elephant” manifests the desire of the subject to repeatedly (re)produce a signifier in his attempt of parodying E.A. Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” In Lacanian term, both stories can be read as metaphors for the signifier lost in the chain of signification. Like Poe’s purloined letter, Twain’s white elephant is a signifier underneath which a meaning constantly slips and slides. Twain’s story shows that the subject enters a network of language seeking for substitutions of the white elephant, the signifier of what was once there. Even after the elephant is discovered dead, the search has never ceased but continued with an arrival of a subsequent report guaranteeing the whereabouts of the white elephant. The signifier is copied and multiplied in searching for the ever-lost meanings. Twain’s story is a metaphor of the Sisyphus-like desire of the subject to eliminate anxiety from lack, slippage of meaning, and absence through the compulsive desire of the subject to repeat the signifier which is constantly substituted.