최명희 단편소설 연구 - 작중인물의 갈등 양상과 주제의식의 전개를 중심으로 -

Abstract

This article aims to derive the conflict patterns of characters in the stories and the themes of the short stories of Choi Myunghee. In addition, it aims to uncover the development of the themes and the directivity of the writer’s consciousness. The analysis of her short stories showed that ‘finding the self-identity’ and ‘finding the ethnic identity’ has been constantly revealed in her initial fragments. In particular, the writer recognized ‘the absence of the father,’ and went to ‘finding roots.’ This paper found that the writer’s consciousness lay in ‘finding the ethnic identity’ that restores tradition, and ‘finding the authenticity of life.’In particular, this paper found that she thoroughly revealed the search for the mother tongue and the affection and grief of parting by combining the abstractness and concreteness of the ‘word.’ Furthermore, she revealed the lives of individuals who became others through absurd reality and social contradictions, and the existential resistance. In addition, by speaking about the awe toward the absolute being and exposing the wrongful practices of Christian schools, she proved the goodness of humans. Also, this paper found that she focused on ‘finding the self-identity’ of women, who were the ‘others’ in the male-centered patriarchal structure of society. In addition, she visualized the conflict patterns of selves and the existential sense of self-conscious vanity through symbols, metaphors, combinations of images, stream of consciousness, experimental techniques, modern sense, two kinds of texts, and the divergence of point. In this way, to the extent that the short stories of Choi Myunghee connote ‘the search for the mother tongue,’ ‘finding the self identity’ and ‘finding the ethnic identity,’ this paper found that her novels have come in contact with the writer’s consciousness toward ‘finding Honbul, death fire.’In other words, the themes and expressions in her short stories are expanded and deepened in her novel, ‘Honbul,’ so it is worth taking notice of them, in that they are clues provided in her literature.