무덤의 낙원과 죽음의 유충: 쿳시의 고딕적 세계

This study examines J. M. Coetzee’s Karoo novel, In the Heart of the Country (1977), through the lens of postcolonial Gothic. The story has raised many conflicted critiques regarding the reliability of its narrator, Magda, which often poses questions about the meaning of the failed narrative. I argue that Coetzee’s Gothicism foregrounds the narrator’s Gothic subjectivity that seeks to defy the law of patriarchy under the colonial condition. Associated in some way with the Western Gothic tradition, In the Heart of the Country grapples with unpalatable socio-political issues by challenging the realist mode of representation that fails to capture the excesses of South African history. Hence, this paper traces the Gothic features in the novel with an emphasis on character representation and narrative structure. As a ghostly figure who raises the undead father by reiterating and rewriting her life story, Magda parodies and complicates the sequential narrative which, in Coetzee’s view, unpleasantly soothes the shattered colonial history. Coetzee’s fragmented story portrays a Gothic subject living in the garden of death, suggesting an alternative yet speculative imagination to the history of a colonial world.