누가 실재계의 아버지를 두려워하랴?: 코맥 매카시의 핏빛 자오선과 국경 3부작에 나타난 아들의 콤플렉스

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate the father-son relationship represented in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy on the basis of Lacanian psychoanalysis. For this purpose, I take a brief look at the place and function of the father in terms of the Oedipus complex. Then, dealing with the nuanced difference between the symbolic father and the real father, I re-conceptualize the father of the Real as a father figure who does no longer perform the symbolic castration. This re-imagined father originates hypothetically from the son of the Real, who can be closely associated with the Deleuzian concept of anti-oedipal, nomadic celibate. Against the backdrop of this Lacanian paradigm, I focus on the relations of Judge Holden and the kid from Blood Meridian, of Don Héctor and John Grady from All the Pretty Horses, and of Eduardo and John Grady from Cities of the Plain as three significant versions about father versus son. I analyse how the kid is sacrificed by Judge Holden who exerts a peremptory violence in the name of the Symbolic order. I look into the ways in which John Grady Cole becomes a cultural orphan and is repudiated by Don Héctor who plays the role of a pseudo-father-in-law. I also examine the bloody confrontation between John Grady as a son of the Real and Eduardo as a father of the Symbolic. Through these analyses, I show how Billy of the Border Trilogy can be interpreted as a literary embodiment of the Real son and father, who might be completely free of the Oedipal crisis.