핵시대의 핵공포: 팀 오브라이언의 『 핵시대』

Abstract

Tim O’Brien’s The Nuclear Age deals with the present and clear danger of nuclear threat in a modern age with its main character William Cowling and his seemingly eccentric digging a shelter hole in his home yard. Cowling's main concern is how to survive in this world that can come to an end at any moment due to weapons of mass destruction including nuclear warhead. Through Cowling's present behavior and past memories, O'Brien is tacitly critiquing the apathy, indifference, or ignorance of the public toward the enormous threat. Cowling's digging the hole looks insane to those around him, but they fail to understand how desperate they would be once they recognize the very plausibility of the end of the world by nuclear bombs. The temporal setting of the text reveals the cause of Cowling's deep-rooted fear of death and his reaction against the collective indifference toward what he feels as the conspicuous danger. The hole he is digging functions as both a real shelter for survival and a metaphor for his inner self. The deeper he digs the hole, the deeper he delves into himself. Cowling's repeated self-question of "What does one do?" invites the reader to think about the matter of sanity and insanity in this world, and his question further extends to the issue of individual and/or collective choice of either possible annihilation or survival. Family plays a crucial role for Cowling to recognize his sense of love and responsibility as a husband and father, and to continue a hope for the future despite many risks. It is through love and hope, the so-called feminine virtues, that will give a clue to the present danger of the world, and it is what O'Brien has constantly presented to his reader as the alternative or complimentary force to the masculine forces that are presented in the form of violence, exclusiveness, incommunicability and so on in his texts.