최인훈의 『회색인』 재고- “갇힌 세대”의 서사를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper tries to reconsider the narrative and rhetoric of 『Hoisaekin』. The characters in 『Hoisaekin』 move through space as a narrative develops, repeating the word ‘go’. In the past, the main character went to W city and read books to escape the ordeal of self-criticism, and entered an air-raid shelter and went towards a woman in the shelter to avoid death. In the present, he goes to the army, a boarding house, and a house of ex-boyfriend of his sister, visits P-town, a pseudo-hometown, and enters Lee, Yujeong's room in place of the woman in the shelter. In the surface structure, the characters try to pursue something with the move through space and the act of ‘going’, but they repeatedly show the same logic. The main character, a refugee, desperately wants to return to his hometown, home, and woman, but in reality he can't find them. In particular, searching for P town and entering Lee, Yujeong's room, which express his desire for the source of ego, are the prototype of the motif of finding a hometown and a woman. The impossibility of exploration leads to a narrative strategy of displacement, which replaces and changes the place of an object. The main character, who represents the author, deliberately chooses replacements rather than what he really wants. What he really wants is misplaced or replaced by other objects, and it leads to self-cynicism in the process of finding his identity. The main character, as a prisoner who is imprisoned without finding an exit, uses the rhetoric of inverted narcissism in his imagination of writing and reading books. In addition to the narcissistic rhetoric, another rhetorical technique that blurs the boundaries between the real and the false, angels and demons, good and evil is the attempt to break all opposing ideas. Getting out of binary oppositions and changing positions are intense search to find solution in the process of finding his identity in a midway position, as the title 『Hoisaekin』 implies. Since this search has been repeatedly embodied in Choi, Inhoon's later works, 『Hoisaekin』 is the prototype of Choi, Inhoon's literature.