巴金의 『家』小考 ― 家族史小說로서의 意味와 構造를 중심으로

A Study on Bajin's Jia(『家』) Focusing on Its Literary Meanings and Structure As The Family Novel

The aim of this study is to evaluate the literary meaning and structural characteristic that Jia家, Bajin's representative works, shows as the family novel, when compared with other novels. Jia which was one of many long-novels written at 1930s in China, is now estimated as a excellent works that tried to present a way for solving some problems caused by inhumanity of feudal customs at 1910s and early 1920s when feudalism was going to collaspe and modernity began to bloom in China, through observing the changing and collasping shape of a feudal family scrupulously. Jia has a very great literary meaning, in that it elevated the family problems such as opposition and conflict between members of family to social problems, viewing social problems in the viewpoint of family, and in that it shows a shape of the changing society in the modern ages of China, reflecting social influence on the family on the basis of familism. So, the literary meaning and function of Jia are not confined to disclosing inhumanity and sin caused by feudalistic thoughts and customs and to demonstrating young intellectuals'(like Juehui 覺慧 and Juemin 覺民) resistance against them. Bajin, writer of Jia, presented a meaning that new society was being created in the inside of the phase of the collasping family, describing the family and its members destroyed by fuedalistic thoughts and customs and spreading inhumanity of feudalism begun from family to the social problems in his novel. He emhasized the fact that the collasping family was connected to the new created society. Jia assumes the form of mixed framework, making two axis of the occurrences the basic frame of plot. One compose of a kind of vertical axis in plot of a work, as a series of occurrences such as opposition and conflict between members happening in Gao's family, the other serves as a horizontal axis in plot, as occurrences like a collision and conflict between students and the militarists that controlled society in those days of China. The form of two-fold framework in plot, found in Jia is worth noticing, because it shows new types of novel plot. It can be due to writer's intention to express various consciousness and attitude of people towards society in his works.