편의점의 ‘거대한 관대’와 현대 소비자본주의 도시적 삶 ‒ 김애란의 소설 「나는 편의점에 간다」

Abstract

This study examines how the urban life of modern consumption capitalist society is reproduced through the symbolic meaning of ‘convenience store’ shaped in Kim Ae‐ran’s novel, I Go to a Convenience Store (2005). Convenience stores, which are the spatial background of narrative, show very intensely the inhuman aspects brought about by the lonely daily life of modern urban people and the ‘McDonaldization’ of convenience stores. More than anything, convenience stores define the way and identity of modern people. ‘I’, a 20‐year‐old heroine, looks for convenience stores like a ‘habit’. She ‘buys a daily life, not goods.’ The act of consuming the goods at the convenience store allows her to confirm her presence as a ‘citizen of Seoul’ by getting rid of her life which has been bruised for a while. The important thing is that the advanced systems and operating methods of convenience stores, such as rationality, efficiency, and computability, are rather dehumanizing. Convenience stores are absolutely mindless for individuals, only for fetish goods, barcode and scanner exchanges. In other words, the identity of an individual is absent from the ‘colossal generosity’ of a convenience store. The interest of the convenience store is because it is “not me but a water, a paper handkerchief, a razor blade.” I Go to a Convenience Store accuses the reality that in the world where everything is reduced to the value of money, individuals experience only alienation without any human relationship or communication. The dramatic scene at the end of the novel, and the advice to ‘look around if you go to a convenience store’ is an alarm bell to the frigid and exigent reality.