속물․경계인․낙오자와 ‘비정상성’의 범주 최명익 소설의 그로테스크(grotesque)

Abstract

Snobs, Losers and Resisters who exist outside the order of capitalism are fully described in Choi Myung-ik’s short stories in 1930’s and 1940’s. The character’s lives are explained something comical and uncanny, this feature make his characters abnormal and his stories grotesque simultaneously. There are three ways to describe these category’s people. First, losers such as the patient, the unemployed, the prostitute are demonstrated in a way of trigger comical and uncanny feelings in A Lungfish Man(1939), The Spring and A New Highway(1939), A Pattern of Mind(1939), The Common Crowd(1941). Choi insert comical things shortly after cause readers uncanny feelings in a specific scene. This kind of setting cause readers defensive smile, grotesque-comic sublimation in a Michael Steig’s context, which aim to relieve tension aroused by uncanny things. Secondly, the snobbs who desperately want to be rich are described satirical, in a way of expanding part of their body such as eye or nose like caricature or parallel to disgust animals in A Characterlessness Man(1937), a Paradox(1938), The Common Crowd(1941). Sense of difference which readers feel when they face to these snobbs also applied to the order of capitalism and its inhuman features. It is recognized as the medium of making people blind, and the blindness is the very reason of bring out sense of difference. Thirdly, intellectuals doubt the legitimacy of capitalist order and show extreme passive nihilism against general moral sense in A Rainny road(1936), A Pattern of Mind(1939). Their own attitude of passive nihilism mean overwhelming power of capitalist order in middle and the latter of 1930’s. In conclusion, the grotesque of his short stories based on a reorganized sensibility called ‘Ero, Gro’ disargument in early 1930’s. Addition to this, pessimistic atmosphere after Sino-Japnese War is main reason of appearing this aesthetics.