오정희의 「동경」,「얼굴」에 나타난 노년의 죽음 문제

Abstract

Talks and thoughts on death has been prohibited in the daily life of contemporary society. Such practice is not exceptional to the discourse of old age. Separated and excluded from the daily life is the idea of death, as with the case of being old today. The present study looks into how the death is conceived along with the old age, through the analysis of two novels ‘The Bronze Mirror’ and ‘The Face’ written by novelist Oh Jung Hee. The novels come from her memories on how her own parents led later life in loneliness and ill health till the death. The novels embodies writer's view on how the elderly people relates their everyday life in the end to the death based on her own parents. The elderly people in the novels die lost their connection to the world expressing emotion of loneliness. Their attitude toward death somewhat differ by their age, health status, gender as well as their experience in other's death in the past. It is hard to find that they understand their life and death as it is. They, noticing the shadow of death from the unbearable ennui of old age, are still excluded and separated from the social connection surrounding them. They fail in reaching to release their anxiety about death and understand it.