Gorsząca inność. Dziecko jako abiekt

Abstract

The paper raises the problem of the child as the Great Other, who appears in the novels of Doris Lessing The Fifth Child and Kenzaburo Öe A personal matter. In both works coming into the world of the Other – a handicapped boy – puts to the test the moral foundations of the conservative society. Nobel Prize winners are making human vivisection that shall specifically examine the persistence of attitudes and values such as parenthood, love, responsibility, confidence in front of drastic Otherness. The child manifests its differences, can not cope in relations with the environment, for which it is something dangerous, threatening ordered hierarchy of the family. Scandal also cause parents responsible for the birth of the ,,monster”. In Doris Lessing novel mother is excommunicated from the patriarchal society, in the prose of Öe father is alone in the community in which he lives with his son. For the analysis of the text the theory of Julia Kristeva on disgust will be used. Categories of abject, semiotic-ness, ,,the stranger in me” will help answer the question – why the hyperactive boy (The Fifth Child) and a boy with cerebral hernia (A personal matter) cause scandal and fear.