‘다름’을 바라보는 문학의 윤리 ― 李銳의 ≪人間≫을 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of the following thesis is searching for the basic answers to the ethical issues presented in The Myth of Lady White Snake, which is the novel based on the Chinese legend describing the love between human and snakes. First of all, the novel raises a question of whether it is right to consider ‘Difference’ as Dangerous so that human beings tend to reject it. Furthermore, it has examined what conditions make real human through White Snake and it has been found that ‘Difference’ means Diversity and can be an object or a place where various possibilities could be present. The life of White Snake, trying to understand human beings through the self-contained world where no one hurts anyone, was destroyed by the instinctive rejection and violence towards Difference in the human world. The village people were constantly doubting and attacking the goodwill of White Snake. The human entry barrier was too high to go over even though White Snake sacrificed her life. The meaning of Human in this novel expands into the symbol of the several entry barriers in the modern society. It has become an enormous structure from the tendency to label ‘Wrong’ on everything that is in disagreement with people’s norm derived from their own thoughts. Although the absolute norm has become vague at the moment where the conflict of the complex interest arises commonly, the procedure of rejection is more frequent and getting stuck more and more. The repetitive act of defining Difference as Wrong results in the lock-system and the system keeps being followed out. In that process, it eventually becomes the firm stereotype and prejudice. Self-defense instinct that the Sameness as ourselves is right but Difference from ourselves is wrong; immature attitude that the tendency of becoming the same as others; the world dominated by the violence of homogeneity, which intends to make the Difference into the Sameness, are not able to guarantee a variety of possibilities any longer.