아동 과학소설에 형상화된 어린이:기억 전달자의 유토피아/디스토피아를 중심으로

Children in Children s Science Fiction:Focusing on Utopia/Dystopia in The Giver

Although science fiction may have appealed to many young readers for quite a long time, it was not until the late nineteenth century that children’s science fiction appeared and distinctions between children’s science fiction and adults’ one began to be drawn with any kind of precision. Since then children’s science fiction has been widely received by a large number of young readers and deeply examined by some critics. Perry Nodleman, among others, brought up a significant problem concerning the basic structure of children’s science fiction. According to Nodleman, there can be a generic conflict between children’s literature and science fiction, considering that in children’s stories, typical protagonists take their adventures that excite them but that nevertheless teach them the inadequacy of the adventurous life, and happily return home again, while science fiction has appealed to readers with such qualities as curiosity, imagination, denial of tradition and hope for the future. Nodleman suggests that the future protagonists in children’s science fiction stories try to move into after escaping from the inadequate high-technology community is much like the present time of their readers. The Giver, one of the representative contemporary science fiction texts for children and young adults, can serve as a touchstone to examine Nodleman’s argument and to further clarify the genre of children’s science fiction. The protagonist of The Giver, Jonus, escapes from his community that seems utopian but is more like a dystopia in reality and then is depicted as moving forward to “Elsewhere” in the last scene of the story. Unlike Nodleman’s analysis, Jonus’s advancement into the future that will be constructed by his bravery and creativity must be different from the mere return to the troubles and pain of the past, which can mean present time to the readers. It is also worth noting that the role of developing the vision for the community is assigned to Jonus, a young man, not to an adult. It can be concluded, therefore, that The Giver raises the possibility of children’s literature and science fiction being meaningfully merged into children’s science fiction, rather than clashing with each other.