김승옥 소설의 자기기만의 현상학

Abstract

This article traces the consciousness structure of self-deception that drives the psychology of Kim Seung-ok's novel. The characters of Kim Seung-ok's novel know that all their thoughts and actions are tricks of self-deception. They know and yet they do. This is because they realize in their lives that deceiving them is the only skill of survival that preserves them. Kim Seung-ok's novel unfolds the lonesome and comic acting of humans whose self-deception has already become a part of their daily lives or the warped distortions and self-harm caused by such escape from self-deception. He overlaps their frustration and anguish, which forced them to flee by deceit, with the writer's own uncomfortable self-consciousness wandering in the chaos of Korean life after the revolution and counter-revolution. And this sense of self-deception is not unrelated to the source of sensitivity unique to Kim Seung-ok's novel. The avoidance of choice shown by Kim Seung-ok's characters is paired with the perception that it is impossible to judge. For them, the absence of self-confidence blocks themselves from the possibility of judgment and choice. The self who is defeated by the world and escapes only confirms himself by “feeling” the distant world. The glamour of flamboyant sensitivity blooms like that in a space of frustration and escape. This sensitivity will be the shining spoilage harvested by Kim Seung-ok's novel, which sympathizes with the bitter self-deception of the characters, through escape.