| Author(s) | Richard A. Andretta |
| Affiliation | Department of English, College of Arts, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia |
| Title | Suffering Is the Thing: Henry James's "TheReal Thing" and Tom Stoppard's TheReal Thing |
| Source | Journal of King Saud University. Arts. Volume 11, No 1. (1999/1419) |
| Abstract | Although lames's short story "The Real Thing," and Stoppand's two-act play, also called The Real Thing, deal with different experiences, they have many things in common. Both are works of initiation. Both expose their artist-protagonists to human suffering as a means to effecting their moral development: Stoppard's playwright experiences suffering himself while lames's unamed painter encounters it in others so that they both acquire insights into the human condition. Such an initiation and exposure to suffering will have a great impact on their future work. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the structures of each work, trace the moral development of each artist, and show that though Stoppard's playwright and lames's unnamed painter come to embrace different views about art, views which are closely related to the meaning of the title of each work, their views are complementary. |
