김숨 소설에 나타나는 눈(目)의 상상력 연구

Abstract

Author Kim-Sum's novel is exotic, unfamiliar and fearful. Her novel makes fanciful recognition of the world by means of substantial things. Although somewhat jocular imaginations made in deep despair seem not to have any definite direction, various fancies lead to a certain image having concrete meanings. Imagination by means of palpable things sets free the novel's characters who are confined in inextricable situations. The fantasies in her novel open the door to new recognition that can not be obtained rational thinking. Using craftly realistic structure and fantastic structure in her novel, Kim-Sum investigates deep core of human consciousness. Her novel has the aesthetic power that can be used in remedy for our insensibility and for common idea. This paper looks into the aesthetic potential of the Kim-Sum's novel by focusing on the images and fancies made through the physical thing, the eye. The eye is the starting point of human intelligence, perception and wisdom. Meanwhile The eye is the means through which the misinterpretation and the cognitional violence are made. The misinterpretation is to regard partial image as the whole image. The cognitional violence is the violence derived from wrong perception through the eye. Using these two roles of the eye, Kim-Sum's imaginative novel stimulates human consciousness. In her novel, holes and eye-shaped things are metaphoric words of the eye. Holes on the ceiling and the floor of a house represent the cracks in the everyday life and are the window through which we can reach true meanings of tangible things that ordinary conception or ordinary experience can not reach. Eating or having eye-shaped things like beads and eyes of fish expresses the desire to get fundamental insight freed from narrow and limited sight. As the metonymical expression of the eye, forehead and eyebrow are the new eyes contrasted with the eye that can be used as the means of the cognitional violence. The new eyes reject the cognitional violence on poor men, jobless people, alienated people and feeble people. The new eyes are the ego-raising substances Avoiding eye contact with other people or other substances is related with irrational sense of guilt of weak-minded people who put all the bad things on their conscience. The weak-minded people can not raise their heads because of the guilty feeling. Kant, the famous philosopher, said that when one feels the irrational sense of guilt, one gets mental freedom. Feeling the guilty sense means to think about the possibility that a bad event could be avoided by one's effort even though the event was irresistible. The guilty feeling that causes avoidance of eye contact boosts the egos of trivial and feeble characters in Kim-Sum's novel.