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영어

“The Beast in the Jungle” can be considered as a companion piece of “The Altar of the Dead” in that both tales are concerned partly with the English Decadence of the 1890s and partly with the classical modernism in the early twentieth century. The heroes in both tales make an escape from ‘everyday routines’ into their own particular inner world of imagination or fantasy in which they build a strong fortress of egotism or narcissism. John Marcher in “The Beast in the Jungle” makes a journey of “a great negative adventure” in his own world of fantasy, waiting for his own “exceptional” fate with May Bartram. But his journey ends with the nightmarish attack by “the beast in the jungle” representing his own final fate. The beast represents John Marcher himself who rejects May's true love and his own life. Thus, it can be said that this tale treats the existential themes of alienation and absurdity in the modern world.