『더블린 사람들』에 나타난 ‘충서(忠恕)’의 주제- 「가슴 아픈 사건」을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to re-examine "A Painful Case," one of the 15 short stories in James Joyce's Dubliners and attempts to reconsider the theme of paralysis, which is the main issue of the book as a whole. The life of James Duffy, the hero of this short story, will be reinterpreted from the viewpoint of "Ren(仁,)" meaning sympathetic generosity, one of the main philosophical concepts of Pre-Chin Dynasty Confucianism.Confucius maintains in his book the Analectics that his principle is comprised of one main stream, which is "Zhong-shu(忠恕)." He expounds that the concept of Zhong-shu is related to two Chinese letters, "Zhong(忠)" and "Shu(恕), which respectively mean "Doing one's best for others' sake, even though it requires personal sacrifice" and "Doing to others as one wants others to do oneself, putting oneself in other's shoes." The significance of using the principles of Eastern philosophy in interpreting a literary work written in English lies in that readers can reconsider the problems of individualism, egocentrism and the subsequent lack of communication and alienation, which are both the characteristics and the problems of the modern world. For such reconsideration will help them compare the attitudes of the East and the West towards those issues and find a new solution to the matters based on the harmony of the physical and the spiritual realms. Thus, in the light of the concept of "Zhong-shu," the reader of "A Painful Case" can recognize the causes and the present state of the paralytic life of James Dufy and Emily Sinico, the main characters in the story. Then they can find the theme of "being sincere to one's self and others" and "mutual understanding based on sympathy" which are hidden in the author's style of revelation of the present situation of "dear dirty Dublin" and the rebuke on the city and its people.