제국의 외부에서 사유하기: 이태준의 『불멸의 함성』론

Abstract

This paper looks at a real person who has become the model in Immortal shout from Taejoon Lee’s novel and study on narrative characteristic where narrative space is going beyond scope of Japanese empire and move forward to Pacific and America from colonial bildungsroman aspect. Taejoon Lee has revealed that the literature work is one of ‘roman a clef’ that modeled on a specific person. Roman a clef is also called as faction which it implicit means of novel with a key. In other words, understanding the real person or a real event that modeled in literature is an essential factor in interpreting the text. Judging from a variety of circumstance, the real model in the literature is Changse Kim who was the independent activist and the first Korean to receive a M.D. in America. He was also Changho Ahn’s doctor and brother-in-law who participated in an independence movement together. The central figure, Duyoung boards a ship across Pacific to America by getting away from Japanese Empire’s territory in order to study aboard in Johns Hopkins University. In this literature, ‘Pacific’ functions as a unique place since Pacific is the neutral zone where it does not belong to any country and international law applied. Therefore, people in every country should be treated equally, but it was not in reality because countries that had failed to reach the required standard of a civilized nation from western standard and were former colony were not considered as independent state by international law. He was Japanese, yet he was also colonial Korean by international law. He has begun to realize the racial discrimination, inequality and identity as colonial Korean. It is common from western view to finish the bildungsroman by showing an immature central figure grows from realizing the way of the world and lives in harmony by compromising with society. The central figure in Immortal shout does grow from that aspect; however, the central figure could not live in harmony with society where it shows a fundamental difference that is different from the concept of western bildungsroman. The story ends with Duyoung realizing the fact that Koreans cannot grow under colonized circumstance and pledge to overcome the reality of colonization. In that sense, Immortal shout should be considered as a colonial bildungsroman.