‘죽음-회귀’의 서사 구조로 본 사회적 해원의 의미 - <아랑 설화>와 <재벌집 막내아들>을 중심으로 -

Abstract

This article aims to name the narrative structure in which the unjustly dead return and resolve their grudges, from the folktales of vengeful spirits to the modern TV shows, as ‘death-return’, and to discuss the social meaning contained in these narratives. <The Legend of Arang> has a narrative structure in which a being who died resentfully returns to this world, voices her grudges, and the community listens and resolves her resentments together. Based on A.J. Greimas’ “Semantic Generative Trajectory”, this narrative structure of ‘death-return’ in <The legend of Arang> creates value by revealing the problems within the community and at the same time shows the process of maintaining the community by being incorporated as social values. The narrative of the protagonist Yoon Hyun-woo being reborn as Jindo Joon to fulfill his desire derived from capitalism in the modern web novel “Reborn Rich” lacks the symbolic act of ‘Arang voicing the governors to resolve her grudges’. Therefore, the web novel’s narrative may be the act of callously ignoring the lives of those who died unjustly after living faithfully in capitalism, like Yoon Hyun-woo. On the other hand, the ‘death-return’ narrative structure of the Netflix drama <Reborn Rich> shows the process of capital proliferation in a metatic attitude. Therefore, the narrative structure of this drama is seen as an attempt to repent of the social structure by making us face the limits of the meritocracy under neoliberalism rather than admiring the conglomerate (a.k.a. Chaebol in korean).