A Study of the Narrative Structure of ″Travel in Mujin″

무진기행의 서술구조 연구

According to Formalist theory, form is not separate from content. Form does not merely convey or express content but can itself produce meaning. The close correlation of the narrative structure, more specifically the time structure of the narrative, and the narrative style of Kim Seung-Ok′s short story′"Travel in Mujin" provides a good example of this argument. The story opens with the first-person narrator, currently living in the bustling city of Seoul, back in his small provincial home town Mujin, where he brings up memories that had been hitherto suppressed. The revived memories are ordered into the narrator′s present thought structure, in effect bridging the vast psychological rift between the lost past and the present. The narrator′s travel in Mujin thus becomes a psychological journey, and Mujin becomes a psychological space where the narrator can experience the continuity of his own being. The "narrating I" excludes the principles of reality from his narrative, concentrating on the inner thoughts, recollections, psychological experience, and the level of consciousness of the "narrated I." This narrative attitude or style expresses the narrator-protagonist′s acceptance and affirmation of the thoughts and actions occur in Mujin (which he had till now been resistant to). It is also an affirmation of the narrative act itself. Before the travel back to Mujin, the narrator-protagonist′s thoughts about his home town was ambivalent-an attitude originating from nostalgia, together with the narrator-protagonist′s ambivalent attitude toward his youthful past. It is a reflection of the narrator-protagonist′s desire for purity intermingled with a disdain for his enervated existence in Seoul. This ambivalence is resolved by the "I" of the narrative present, and Mujin enables him to come to a renewed affirmation of his life.