김동리의 종교 갈등과 N. 스캇 마머데이의 문화적 화해 : 스티븐 스필버그의 ≪레디 플레이어 원≫을 중심으로

Abstract

Dong-Ri Kim’s Eul-Hwa and N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn have a theme of religious conflict in common. As Kim’s narrative tracts a process of gradually aggravated religious conflict between a shaman Eul-Hwa and a fundamentalist Christian Young-Sool, Momaday also depicts his main characters’ inner conflict originating from difference in their worldview and religious creed, perse. However, the two novelists show a significantly enough difference in terms of their thematic focus and its degree. Whereas narratives in Eul-Hwa just center on religious arguments between the two protagonists, Momaday, distancing his narrative from never-ending religious controversy, focuses on describing how the main characters like Abel, Angela and Father Alguin suffer from their actual life-based agony and illness such as Abel’s war fatigue and Angela’s spiritual disease. And beyond individuals’ sufferings, Momaday’s thematic message broadens into a sense of community which ecological communalism predominates in. The two writers’ difference on their narrative focus renders Eul-Hwa result in aggravating religious conflict while reserving, in House Made of Dawn, a significant message that enables religious and cultural reconciliation.