“인간은 섬이 아니다”: 영화 <어바웃 어 보이>에 나타난 존 던의 형제애와 불교의 연기적 세계관

The purpose of this article is to explore the subject of “no man is an island” in John Donne's work, in Buddhism and in a movie. In Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, John Donne, the seventeenth-century English poet, reaches beyond the isolation of each individual by affirming the invisible oneness that encompasses all of humankind saying, “No man is an island. entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main . . . any man’s death diminished me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls fir thee.” In other words, John Donne puts an emphasis on ‘brotherhood’ in that all human beings are living interdependently in this world. The message like this is also expressed in the Pratītya-Samutpāda (緣起論) of Buddhism. The Sanskrit word, Pratītya-Samutpāda, can be translated into a dependent co-origination, which means that all creations in this world exist interdependently. I can say that this motive could also be embodied in About a Boy, a movie adapted from a novel by Nick Hornby. At the start of About a Boy, a rich, self-centered, good-looking 38 years old bachelor Will Freeman (Grant) says, “All men are islands.” He likes to float around on his land in the sea of life. Being independently wealthy as a result of royalties from a popular jingle his father once wrote, Will doesn’t have a job or any other serious commitment. Thus, he spends his time watching TV, having his hair done, and shagging different women through London. At last he meets a 12-year-old boy named Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) by fate. Poor Marcus is desperately looking for a surrogate father in order to prevent his emotionally unbalanced, granola-eating mother, Fiona (Toni Collette), from killing herself. At first, Will doesn’t want Marcus around, but Marcus is as persistent as he is weird. Eventually, Will puts the boy stalker to good use by pretending to be his single-and-looking father. Slowly, the two develop a tentative relationship that is made more difficult by the jealous Fiona, who feels that Will is stealing her son from her. The selfish guy, Will, after all, learns to be a real nice, monogamous surrogate dad while Marcus learns to be less creepy by wearing cool sneakers and listening to rap music. A stage presentation at the boy’s school shows Will, Marcus and Fiona that human beings need social ties, and that real families are composed of caring, unselfish, non-suicidal members. In the end, Will maintains