최인호 장편소설 『지구인』에 나타나는 폭력 연구

Abstract

This study analyzed aspects of violence appeared in『the Earthman』written by Choi, In-ho. Korean society in the 1970s was an ambivalent place that embraced economic development and political confusion simultaneously. The writers faced the dark reality hidden under the slogan of economic development in the era of industrialization and urbanization, and the political situation of military dictatorship. In the 1970s, the Korean novel had more sociological imagination than ever before, and actively formed it. Through the characters who live in the industrial age, Choi, In-ho sought the alienation and solitude of human beings under oppression of the state. Choi In-ho explores the aspects of violence in society through the character who threatens society as well as who takes advantage of a repressive state. In『the Earthman』, Lee Jong-Dae is a person who wants to destroy the social order in a time when strong social order is demanded. He reveals the violence within the social system, and also emphasizes the nature of absurdity and violence. The author, by Lee Jong-Dae, attributes the cause of violence appeared in the era of industrialization to the Korean War that occurred before the repressive society of the 1970s. In『the Earthman』, based on the Carbine rifle burglar affair, in 1970s, Lee Jong-dae and Lee Jong-se who were exposed to massive violence of war justified their acts by imitating violence for their own desires. In the case of Lee Jong-dae, he became 'an Evildoer' who had plunged into mimesis mechanism that justified violence and had no difference with the violence, and so threatened society. In the period when a new social order is required with recovering the scars of war, a person exposing violence and spreading indiscriminate violence is a threat. When violence and conflict persist within the social system, cracks inevitably occur. Instead of ending the violence by incorporating the person who causes the violence into the social system, the society aims to a person in ‘double’ relationship with violence, resolving it by ‘scapegoat mechanism.’ In here, the scapegoat is a social concept, the result of group violence. The scapegoat is not only essential for maintaining the order of social system, but also resolves the violence in the society. Lee Jong-dae refused to be incorporated into the new history and to make a difference with violence and society determined him as a victim for social stability and purification instead of regulation and oppression. However, he refused to be a scapegoat for society and destroyed himself to remain an evildoer. In the 'Double' relationship with Lee Jong-dae, Lee Jong-se was freed from the mimesis mechanism by the death of Lee Jong-dae whom he had tried to imitate and at the same time had hated. However, after resolving the hatred, Lee Jong-se ironically felt compassion to him. Through that ambivalent feeling of hatred and compassion, Lee Jong-se, who realized that the mimetic desire that dominated his childhood was actually a fiction, tried to rescue Lee Jong-dae, the evildoer, by purification. Choi In-ho determined the "Veracity of Novel" by capturing the fabrication of violence and desire that had arisen since the Korean War. The gigantic violence of the Korean War was inherited to the repressive political situation of the 1970s, and was a ghost that erodes both individuals and groups. A group that has imitated violence advances to a new history by removing a person who is not free from violence, instead of reforming him. Therefore, it is literarily meaningful that 『the Earthman』 explored how the scars of the Korean War that remained until the 1970s were transformed into violence.