안톤 체호프와 레이먼드 카버의 단편 비교 연구: “욕망”을 모티브로

Abstract

R. Carver is called “American Chekhov” despite of the differences of their languages and nations and of the era when each of both has lived. There are few academic studies of comparative analysis between Chekhov and Carver’s artworks. In this paper, these two great masters’ short stories will be analyzed in the aspect of “desire”. The reason of analyzing artworks in the motif of “desire” is owing to the fact that many short stories of the two writers deal with the issues of human desire that is considered as one of the foremost fundamental and metaphysical areas of humans. In each short story of theirs, Chekhov and Carver try to view the deep inside of daily life of ordinary people. Thus, in this paper, the following short stories are compared: Chekhov’s “The Chemist’s Wife”(1886) and Carver’s “The Student’s Wife”(1964), and Chekhov’s “Misery”(1886) and Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing”(1980). The comparative analysis has been performed on the criteria of the sexual desire - “want to sleep” - and the desire of having communication - “want to speak”. As a result, in the former artworks, it appears that there are loneliness due to the ignorance of a husband and, at the same time, the desire of having communication and surviving, behind the sexual desire - “want to sleep” - that wives (chemist’s wife and student’s wife) have. In the latter artworks, it seems that survival needs and fundamental starvation coexist behind the desire of having communication which parents who have lost a child have. In conclusion, in Chekhov and Carver’s short stories, several desires are not separated from each other but closely connected to one another as a big desire. It is said, “small people, big feelings”, which is the very attractive part of these writers’ short stories. Furthermore, I find that Carver has assimilated Chekhov’s writing style with which a story can be delivered in an objective, concrete, and vivid way since the writer describes it as an impartial witness of life. Compared to Chekhov’s writing style through which readers are allowed to freely imagine the end of the story, Carver describes his story in detail as if a photo is taken. He zooms in the image or message that he wants to stress so that the readers of his story can focus on it while having a strong image in their mind. In addition, his short story connotes a certain clue that drives its readers to imagine another new story, and has autobiographical elements that contain high degree of integrity. This study will contribute to the comparative studies both between Chekhov and Carver’s common poetics and between their short stories. It will help understanding the two writers’ artworks that are definitely distinguishable. From now on, I hope more studies are performed with the basis of this study.