소설교육과 인물

Novel Education and Characters

In literary education, particularly in novel education, the meaning of characters in a work converges on the meaning of the work. It is because they are the subjects of the narrative discourse revealing their personality and connecting episodes through their words and deeds. The discussion of this study with regard to this matter is summarized as follows. The newness of contemporary novels has been reflected specifically in the characters of the stories. Although novels are fictional, there has been continuous inquiry for enhancing the reality. As a result, contemporary novels came to be not only analytic but also responsive to the reality. In this sense, they have been settled as a representative form that meets modern people’s literary desires. The literary characteristic of Kim Dong‐in’s novels is in the spirit of denial. Although they deal with problems in the colonized Korean society, they focus more on personal issues rather than on social ones. Through his creation methodology represented by puppet manipulating, he configures characters lacking in moral consciousness. As a result, they are described as impulsive characters with notable psychopathological symptoms. Lee Sang adopted analytic methods in order to present the inner world of humans realistically. The main characters of his novels consistently cope with their reality powerlessly like the writer’s unfortunate life. This is a self‐portrait of a superfluous man. By combining the technique of psychological novels and irony, he expresses it enigmatically. In Chae Man‐sik’s Taepyeongcheonha (A Peaceful World), most of the characters are caricatured as ‘a portrait of a villain.’ Particularly through having Yoon Doo‐seop calling the reality under the rule of the Japanese imperialism ‘Taepyeongcheonha (peaceful world),’ he attains the double effect of satirizing negative characters and criticizing the reality. In this sense, Taepyeongcheonha is believed to open a new horizon of Korean modern literature through the organic combination of satire and the characters.