安岡章太郎 초기작품의 像

Abstract

In this dissertation, early works of Yasuoka Shoutarou are analyzed in the light of family psychology with his Bildungsroman Kaihen no Kokei being centered on. In existing researches of Kaihen no Kokei, focus is mostly put on the intimacy between the son and the mother, and the protagonist's independence and subjecthood are neglected and his attitude about his mother's death is depicted as being passive. In this dissertation, focus is equally distributed on 3 members of the family, and the relationship between the son and the mother is reanalyzed and a different interpretation is made of the protagonist's feeling about the death of his mother. The protagonist has a mixed feeling towards his mother because she harbours an animosity against his father and tries to force her feeling into the protagonist. His mother is, in fact, rather an absolute authority who oppresses him psychologically than an intimate person to him. When his father starts living together with the family, his psychological oppression together with “changed attitude of his mother“ makes him stand aloof from the family. The protagonist feels a woman from his mother, which is not Oedipus complex but a new feeling he gets towards his mother after he finds “the feminity of his mother” His realization that she is a mother to him but she is a woman to his father distorts the image of his mother he has had so far. And he starts feeling alienated in the family and leaves the family looking for his ＂own place＂. After his father starts living together with the family, some change is shown in his mother. Their conjugal relations which got unstable after the war gets worse. The father has hardly talked with his son and wife after he came back home from the war and isolated himself from the family. And the son leaves the family to look for his ＂own place＂. The mother lived leaning on her husband before the war and lived leaning on her son during the war but has never lived independently, and now the change in the family makes her feel empty and pushes her into a madness. The family members not becoming aware of the broken balance in the family, the family is breaking down by and by. Each member of the family treats each other as if other are strangers without actually realizing it. The family breaks down because they try to keep the structure of the family without being able to adapt themselves to a new circumstance of the family. The protagonist turns his back from the breaking down family. But it is not a solution and he can not get perfect independence because he is living in a delusion of the past without accepting his demented mother. When he goes to the hospital to attend at his mother's deathbed, he faces reality. The mother leaves a word 'Otousan' which turns her animosity against his father into an affection and corrects the distorted image he had of his father and mother and makes him realize what his real ＂own place＂ is. At the end of this dissertation, the protagonist's attitude about death is reinquired into by examining the scenery of the beach appeared in the last part of the novel. The 'strange scenery' of the beach can be said to be an image of his mother's life and also an image of the family. He finally understands the image of his mother and his family which was not ideal at all through this 'strange scenery' of the beach, and faces with the reality of the family. And his attitude about the death of his mother is not passive at all. He does not just accept the fact that it is the law of nature that everyone dies, but he tries to understand the real meaning of his mother in the family with whom he has been in constant conflict. And it is the moment when the protagonist finds his "own place" in real meaning by accepting his life without his mother and acquiring subjecthood of his life. The background of this novel Kaihen no Kokei which depicts growth process of the protagonist who suffers from constant conflict as a member of a family and as an individual is postwar Japan but it calls our attention to the “meaning of family” who live in a different time and different society. By accepting the existence of his mother, the protagonist has a chance to accept the existence of his father as well. Yasuoka Shoutarou depicts the father as an individual human in Kaihen no Kokei who he depicts as a stranger or just another member of the family in kozoku Danranzu and Souta to Inu. Kaihen no Kokei is an important novel for the writer because through which he could present different “meaning of family”.