| New stories for children by modern writers fall in-between classical folk tales and literature for adults in several aspects. They usually have somewhat extraordinary or neurotic heroes, complex plots and ambivalent endings whereas most folk tales have ordinary heroes, simple plots and happy endings with the theme of rewarding the good and punishing the evil. Chang-Sup Sohn, a canonical Korean writer, published seven short stories and one novel for children from 1955 through 1962. By analyzing these works, this study attempts to probe their psychoanalytic meanings and the author’s unconscious motivations for writing.
These eight works of Sohn’s can be categorized into three groups according to their themes. The first group, which includes The Chick and Hyunjoo, A Blind Puppy and Seri, and The Dog Who Has Returned, deals with the love of the boy-hero for an animal. Animals are symbols of the children, and especially weak or injured animals symbolize castrated children. The love for helpless animals in these stories is significant if we identify the writer with S, the hero, in his autobiographic novel, A Comic Creature of God, who suffered from night enuresis, was abused by his mother and grandmother, and was bullied by the boys in his neighborhood. Night enuresis is a symbolic castration and its cause is desire for love. These sufferings of S are sublimated in the three stories, and S shows love for himself, his younger and miserable self who hungers for love.
The second group of stories is about the separation and reunion of parents and children, and the close bond between them. In these stories, S’s guilty feelings toward his own children whom he deserted in Japan, his family romance about his dead father and fantasy about his mother who eloped and deserted him, are reflected in the mother figure who searches for the daughter she deserted before her death in Hey, Who Are You?, and the father figure in The Last Gift, who is irresponsible, incompetent and violent but nevertheless does not desert his son.
In the remaining three stories the third theme of encouraging socialization is explored and lessons of controlling aggression and its rewards. These are self-therapeutic stories, which show the alternative behavioral pattern of S who lived a violent and withdrawn life. |
