김유정 소설의 서사 전략 연구 －그레마스의 기호 사변형을 활용하여－

Abstract

This study focused on Kim Yu-jeong's short stories with the gold motif and similar acts to prostitution. These short stories are common in that characters have conflicts over confronting value relations inherent in a single object. The study employed Greimas' Semiotic Square Model, which is useful for understanding dynamic action in the confronting semantic relations in a single object or concept. It was possible to analyze the short stories with the gold motif in a semiotic manner since they were the énoncé of the modality between “I can have it” and “I cannot have it” inside the characters. In these short stories, there were scenes in which the characters tried to reach ‘S₁: I can have it’ by force as the desire of ‘non-S₁: I cannot help having it’ got involved in the option of ‘non-S₂: I can let it go.’ In these short stories, the author used a narrative strategy of the characters generating into materials less than gold due to their material desire. The short stories with similar acts to prostitution can be discussed based on the reciprocality of “directed rules” and “prohibited rules” of the marriage system. In these short stories, the wives were oriented toward ‘S₁: directed state,’ but they entered ‘non-S₂: unprohibited’ to solve their poverty issues and were put in the situation of ‘non-S₁: undirected’ under the implicit consent of their husbands. Sex-driven characters lured the wives of non-S₁into the ‘S₂: prohibited situation,’ but the wives hoped to return to the ‘S₁: directed state.’ In these short stories, the author used a narrative strategy of depicting the poverty-stricken reality where the characters' moral ideas were overturned by material values. These findings indicate that Kim's short stories have confronting concepts over a single object and depict resulting conflicts among characters. That is, he knew that there were two confronting concepts over a single object and used narrative strategies of revealing a gap between them, thus depicting material and ethical values in meaningful ways.