황순원이 이해한 실존주의 사상과 문학 — 황순원 장편소설 3편을 중심으로

Abstract

At a time when discussions on existentialism were most active in Korea, Hwang Soonwon wrote a long novel, Descendant of Cain, Human Graft, and Stand on a slope of trees. The writer himself never said that he wrote these novels, conscious of the existentialism that flowed from the West. However, if you have read Sartre and Camus’ books or read discussions on existentialism in the literary world, you can say that it has been influenced negatively or positively by existentialism. If he had read post-war novels written by Jang Yonghak, Son Changseop, Oh Sangwon, Lee Hochul and Lee Bumsun in the same era, there would be no reason to turn his back on existentialism. The researcher read Hwang Soonwon‘s own existentialist humanism, which saw the practice of love for reason as the best virtue of human beings in Descendant of Cain. Human Graft is related to existentialism because it contains the themes of a good’s practical efforts to fight evil and their willingness to escape from irrational reality, compassion and advocacy for life. Stand on a slope of trees, a sense of responsibility must be accompanied, but an understanding of freedom is intact, and an existentialistic proposition that over-freedom destroys humans is suggested. In this regard, Hwang Sunwon can be regarded as a writer who knows the ideology of existentialism and digests it in his own way.