2020년대 한국 소설에 나타난 가난의 심성 고찰 - 「반려빚」, 「은의 세계」, 「미조의 시대」를 중심으로 -

초록

The representation of poverty in three Korean novels in the 2020s was analyzed in terms of the character’s mentality. This paper examined how poverty has a negative and destructive effect on social needs, human development, and human relationships. In particular, this article focused on the pattern that emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, self-destruction, shame, humiliation, misery, lethargy, distrust, resignation, loss of self-esteem, and psychological exhaustion that occur in poverty make up a specific mentality. It also confirmed how responses and perceptions of poverty are related to the recent social context, which has significantly changed. “Companion Debt”, “The World of Eun”, and “The Age of Mijo” all interestingly dealt with the shrinking and distortion of residential spaces and workplaces, family and friends and colleagues, cultural life and leisure, and everyday psychology and behavioral patterns by poverty. It is also common that female youth characters who experience social inequality and multi-layered discrimination appear. “Companion Debt” depicts a pattern in which the youth debt destroys the character's social prestige and dignity and loses the desire and control of life. In “The World of Eun”, a person who was assumed to be a harmful and contaminated second-class family and second-class citizen became the subject of hatred and exclusion. “The Age of Mijo” depicts characters who endure mental slaughter while being deprived of options in both labor and housing. The three novels showed that poverty is not causedby individual moral deficiencies, lack of intelligence, or degradation of character, but a harmful and shameful environment and relationship problem, and that we are all vulnerable in a poor society, not poor individuals.

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