엔도 슈사쿠의 『깊은 강』론―‘악’의 구원의 문제를 중심으로

Abstract

The present thesis examines Endo Shusaku’s most representative work of his later years, Deep River, in light of the aspects of evil and its progression towards redemption. The aspects of evil in this work are primarily manifested by the female character, Mitsuko. Her seduction of Otsu at college which leads to the loss of Otsu’s virginal purity depicts the evil that Sade conceptualized as the physical degeneration of godly purity and order. The interior of and the goddesses engraved in the Bhagabati Mandir Temple that Mitsuko wanders into during her trip to India are presented as internalized evil and its extreme opposite, reproduction. Mitsuko’s depiction in her hotel room as being apart from the other travelers is an illusion to Francois Mauriac’s Thérèse Desqueyroux, in which Thérèse chooses not to save Jesus when she is confined in Argelouse. Ultimately, Mitsuko’s evilness is brought to redemption through transmigration. At one point, Misuko makes a comment to Isobe, who has come to India in search for his wife’s transmigrated daughter. She notes that Isobe’s wife has transmigrated in his heart which reveals Endo’s supposition that the inner world of someone who has affected another is revived within that other person’s world rather than in the physical world. At the end of the story, Otsu’s sacrificial death under a false charge is predictable, being a projection of Jesus’s crucifixion. With the redemption of evil in Mitsuko, Endo emphasizes redemption through the absorption of concepts and love into an individual person’s inner world rather than through the practice of institutionalized religions or doctrines.