도스토예프스키의 『죽음의 집의 기록』에 나타난 원형운동과 선형운동

Abstract

Dostoevsky's autobiographical prison novel Notes from the House of the Dead is a story about the process of the narrator-hero Goryanchikov's (who is the alter ego of the author) attaining physical, psychological and spiritual freedom. In a sense it is a personal 'Salvation History' of the narrator. To make the narrator's spiritual liberation tangible, Dostoevsky has structured the text on the axis of two movements: the circular movement and the linear movement. The circular movement is the one that gives the most of the prisoners the illusion of the freedom. Consumption of alcohol, consumption of money, gambling, and prison breaking belong to the circular movement in that they fail to secure the freedom, not the sense of freedom. Even the most positive act in the prison, that is, the theatricals provide freedom only temporarily. On the contrary, the narrator, by going through a linear movement from the depth of the hell of hatred to the final glorious moment of freedom, illuminates the Christian teleology. The illogical change in the narrator's status(from a political prisoner to a wife murderer) and psychology turn out a narrative strategy to proclaim the narrator's salvation.