샤오홍의 『삶과 죽음의 장』에서 묘사된 농민의 항일투쟁에 대한 재검토

Abstract

As a part of a larger research project on the so-called “North-East writers group,” which has long been acclaimed for producing anti-Japanese resistance literature, this paper offers a new reading of Xiao Hong’s novella The Field of Life and Death, one that focuses on the peasants’ own perspectives on the Japanese invasion and anti-Japanese struggle the novella portrays. This paper not only tries to redress previous nationalist interpretations of the work, but also critically examines other interpretations, such as feminist readings of it, that have refuted the nationalistic ones. My own interpretation emphasizes that the peasants in the novella are portrayed as already coping with various sorts of serious pain even before the coming of the Japanese, which is primarily related to the natural, animal-like aspects of a human life, such as childbearing and disease. For this reason, I argue that this novella cannot be read solely as a piece of anti-Japanese literature. At the same time, I contend that the Japanese invasion does carry weight in the novella, in the sense that it brings the peasants’ lives to even more extreme hopelessness, thus driving them to look for some way out of the abyss of despair. Even though the peasants do not reach clear political awakening or acquire full-fledged national consciousness within the novella, I argue that they leave their previous unreflective, animal-like state and enter the historical stage, and even achieve a type of nascent historical agency, as they respond to the Japanese invasion and participate in anti-Japanese struggle.