증언의 화자와 청자 :『눈먼 암살자아이리스와 사브리나

Abstract

The Blind Assassin has received contradictory responses, ranging from praise to strong criticism. The criticism is mostly directed against the long and complicated narrative, further burdened by an unreliable narrator and a profusion of historical detail. This paper focuses on the hitherto unnoticed addressee, Sabrina, and examines the transmission of the narrator Iris’s spiritual awakening to her granddaughter. Critics have raised the question as to who discovers the materials at the close of the novel, where Iris dies at the age of 83 after spending almost a year writing her memoir. There are sufficient clues that it is Sabrina who edits and publishes the materials she has received from her grandmother in the form of The Blind Assassin. The tragic events of Iris’s life, such as the suicides of her father, husband, and daughter, and especially her sister Laura, took place so unexpectedly that Iris was unable to properly comprehend them. The very process of bearing witness to the trauma she has lived through helps her to come to understand the events belatedly. Iris writes the memoir for Sabrina, and it is this sympathetic addressee who comes to share her trauma. Sabrina does not reject Iris’s gift but edits the materials (which incorporates various genres such as memoir, sci-fi romance, magazine and newspaper clippings) in a mode that best suits Iris’s subversive narrative, suggesting that Iris’s feminist awakening has been transmitted to Sabrina.