Saul Bellow의 初期小說 硏究(Ⅲ) : Dangling Man에 있어서의 죽음 = Death in Dangling Man

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Alienation has been one of the great concerns of Saul Bellow's critics. As K. M. Opdahl says, however, Saul Bellow has been haunted by the problem of evil and death, and from his first novel, Dangling Man, he continually struggle to solve them. In this thesis, the writer discusses the several issues about death in Dangling Man including the relationship between alientation and death. The main points are the following.
At first appearance the problem of Joseph, the pro agonist of Dangling Man, seems to be alienation. The reason is that he is alienates, and his alienation gives him troubles throughout the novel. But we must not fail to notice that his alienation results from his agony of evil, deprevity and death of human beings caused by the frustration of his idealism. In other words, his alienation is the escape from reality in which his desire, that is the realization of his idealism, can not be accomplished, to the situation where the harriers against his desire are removed. In psychology, his alienation is his inadequate adjustment according to "defense mechnism." Therefore, Joseph's alienation is the outer aspect of his inner conflict-evil and death.
Joseph's idealism lies in his belief of man's goodness and ability. His consciousness and horror of death is brought about by his mental attitude that he consider death as punishment for human beings' evil and deprevity as a result of such idealism. His main consciousness of his evil and the possibility of deprevity comes from his sexual guilty sense-for example, his love affair with Kitty and sexual desire to Dolly, his sister-in law and Etta, his nephew. To overcome this terrifing death, Joseph, who feel firmly convinced of man's ability, tries to become "a whole man" but in vain. Then, he can not help accepting death which makes him feel horror and escape from reality.
In Dangling Man, as Joseph says "Continued life means expectation. Death is the abolition of choice. The more choice is limited, the closer we are to death," he consider death as "the abolition of choice. Therefore, he abhors the life in modern society in which limits man's possibility of choice, and escape from such city life to isolation. However, in isolation he finds another shadow of his death. The reason is that isolation itself is another abolition of choice. At last he voluntarily enter the Army, which is symbolic death because the army is a socity which puts aside personal free choice. The process to such death is represented through various death images, and the final acceptance of death by his will is "irony."
In a way, as he is clearily aware that his volunteering for military service means his intentional abolition of choice which he accepts as death, Joseph's symbolic death can be a suicide. In addition, Emile Dur-kheim's theory of suicide, especially that of "egoistic suicide" is very suggestive in explaining Joseph's symbolic death as a suicide.