오정희 소설의 상징성 연구

Abstract

Ever since her debut in The Joong-ang Daily’s Annual Spring Literary Contest in 1969 with The Woman of the Stationery Store,(「완구점 여인」) Oh, Jeong-hee (born in 1947) has published about forty works, including memoirs and works of children’s literature. Oh has received much attention throughout her literary career, attracting readers with her emotional usage of language and in-depth treatment of the consciousness of the ego alienated from everyday reality. While Oh may not be such a prolific writer-given the limited number of works published despite the relative length of her career-critical study of her works continues to be quite active, having generated tens of critical essays and more than a hundred dissertations. Even though critical studies are being actively written in regard to Oh’s novels, there is yet to emerge a clear line of interpretation of her works. The difficulty with which to establish such a clear interpretation on her novels can be attributed to the complex literary devices that mark them, including: the plot structures that mix recollections of the past with the present situations; the psychology and behavior of characters that exceed commonsensical perspectives; a riddle-like descriptive style and a technique of writing code-like conversations; and a highly sophisticated symbolism. In particular, what renders Oh’s novels inhospitable to easy and clear interpretations is the difficulty of interpreting and explaining various symbols of a given work within the frame offered by that work, even though those symbols form the crucial part of the work’s subject. The aim of this study is threefold: first, to identify and define the meanings and functions of the symbols found in Oh’s novels; second, to examine how those symbols are connected to the overarching themes and subjects; and third, to determine the overall meanings of the themes of Oh’s novels as reflected in the symbols used. This study focuses on the symbols' uses in her novels because the large themes of her novels-characters’ inner lives as abstract subjects and the ontological problems of life and death-are almost always dealt with those symbols. This study divides the symbols found in Oh’s novels into two broad categories: the universal and the personal. Universal symbols include popular and archetypal symbols commonly spoken of in the theories of symbols. These are symbols that are used repeatedly and that are also used by other authors to denote similar meanings or questions. Oh’s novels largely rely on traditional narrative literature, which gives the large framework within which the general symbols of her novels are used. Personal symbols refer to particular objects or characters that would not normally be employed as symbols but that are nonetheless used as symbols. Such personal symbols often come from the author’s penetrating insight into particular objects or characters. Some examples of Oh’s personal symbols given focus in this study include Coke, Korean flower playing cards(‘화투’), and artificial teeth. In order to establish the basic framework of analysis, Section II of this study looks into the patterns in which symbols are re-contextualized in Oh’s novels as well as the meanings of those symbols. The section inquires into the functional aspects of symbols used in Oh’s novels; categorizes those symbols as either universal or personal; and examines the characteristics of each symbols with respect to how they are re-contextualized. Section III examines how traditional narrative literature is used as a universal symbol in Oh’s works. Included in the examination are such symbols as the woman weaver,(「織女」) the valediction, (「別辭」), and the sacrifice(「燔祭」), having their roots, respectively, in the old tale of the woman weaver, the Buddhist Uranbunjae(우란분재)tale, and the traditional Christian narrative. The section confirms that Oh employs these traditional stories to narrate her own plots and examines how these traditional stories are used in Oh’s novels, whether in their original forms or in variations. To this end, the section analyzes the narrative structures of the traditional tales and modern novels, and derives how the former are employed in their original forms and are used in variations. The section then proceeds to investigate how these general symbols relate to the overall contexts of, and gain meanings within, the given novels. Section IV looks into how personal symbols are employed and how their meanings are applied and expanded within given novels. The section examines A Day in the Spring(「봄날」), The Evening Game(「저녁의 게임」), and A Copper Mirror(「銅鏡」) to identify how the author employs particular objects or characters to reveal empirical meanings. The section also looks into how unusual family relations gain meanings by destroying general and common rules and how the transference of general attributes help them gain ontological meanings. Oh’s novels never explain the motivation behind the behavior of their characters. If there is any such motivation, it is only implied. This study affirms that symbols found in Oh’s novels serve to reveal what is deliberately concealed by the author. Those symbols also serve to reinforce the ideological themes of Oh’s novels. This study reveals that the interpretation of the overarching themes of Oh’s novels is possible only when proceeded by the interpretation of symbols in them.