황순원 소년소설과 경계성의 의미고찰

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the meaning of borderline by investigating the novel for boys by Hwang Sunwon. The novel for boys is a genre of novels which considers those between childhood and adults in the growth process as the problematic existence. Hwang Sunwon published the novel for boys during his boyhood while in Sungsil Middle School. In other words, he published the novel for boys while he changed his writing from poems to novels in his entire literary life. He graduated Sungdeok Elementary School at 15 years old and published the novel for boys before entering into the 2nd High School in the Waseda University when he was 20 years old. The period he published the novel for boys was when he was at the borderline between a teenager and an adult. Moreover, he showed the specific career by publishing the novel for boys when he was at the borderline changing his literary activity from poems to novels. As paying attention to his specific career above, this paper tried to examine the novel for boys by Hwang Sunwon and the meaning of borderline in two aspects. The first purpose of this study is to identify the contribution of and impact of the themes found in the novel for boys which Hwang Sunwon published during his boyhood on the earlier period of his literary life since then. Next, this study tries to clarify the meaning of borderline on the viewpoint from the study on the writer because the novel for boys by Hwang Sunwon was in the process of change from poems to novels. Hwang Sunwon published two novels for boys, “Memory” and “Graduation Date”, and “Star” and “Chicken <Ancestral rites>”, the short stories in his earlier literary life, can be also classified into the scope of novel for boys. The features of themes in the novel for boys by Hwang Sunwon were found in three ways. The first feature is the character restoring the mental stability as regressing by maternal love. The second feature is the character showing the wills to fight against and overcome poverty. The last feature is the character facing up to the reality only by facing the death of a sister and the death of a life which he cherished. It is found that the subject awareness in the novel for boys is reflected in the full-length novel by Hwang Sunwon since his boyhood. More specifically, the scene which Gyeongsuk saved Yeongil, her master’s son, from fire in the ‘Memory’, the novel for boys, is almost similar to the scene which Ojangnyeo saved Bak Hun, the landlord’s son who made the forest sire, in the full-length novel ‘Descendant of Cain’. Furthermore, this study found the specific common feature that the psychological change from separation through translation to incorporation in the initiation novel is much like the change of literary life of Hwang Sunwon who started the literary life by writing the poems, published the novel for boys and finally published full-life stories. The creative work by Hwang Sunwon writing the novel for boys was the period to build the narrative themes in the aspect above and the period of borderline for the test of the suggestive process and further growth in the viewpoint from the study on the writer. Therefore, the meaning of the borderline found in the novel for boys by Hwang Sunwon is very significant.