둥시(東西) 장편소설 『운명 바꾸기(篡改的命)』의 알레고리적 독법

Abstract

The issue of migrant workers reveals the hidden side of Chinese society that has achieved rapid growth. Even while having played a leading role in the Chinese industrialization, urbanization, and modernization legends, they were concurrently perceived as unfamiliar beings positioned outside the urban boundary. The life of the protagonist Wang Chang-chi in Dongxi's novel The Tampered Life depicts such weary life of the migrant worker. Through the desperate struggle of the so-called “life without three essentials(三無人生)” that are money, power, and background, the author tells the absurdities of modern society. What the novel presents as an allegory can also be referred to as the backside of modern society concealed in the utopian myth of success. The reason this study aims to focus on allegory is that the form of allegory is in touch with none other than the thinking about modernity. The protagonist Wang Chang-chi experiences miserable failures in the repetitive ill-fated relationship with Lin Jia-bo; the subtle tense relationships between success and failure, hope and despair, and dream and awakening that are exhibited in this process coexist with contradictions and clash and unveils the cover-ups. Just as Wang Chang-chi did not intend to walk toward the path of unhappiness, neither did Lin Jia-bo exert direct violence or power. However, the degree of force such unintended power exerts clearly implicates the structural power of modern society. The novel vividly portrays how unseen power internalized in social structure penetrates an individual and daily life. Moreover, tuning ears to the sounds made in this most everyday, lowest place will probably be the kernel of thinking that pierces the creation of the author Dongxi. Certainly, he seems to drive the characters into failures and frustrations without granting a utopia, but nonetheless, he emphasizes that their wretched battles paradoxically hold a ray of “hope.”