“좋은 이야기”로서의『기억전달자』: 과거의 기억과 언어의 힘

Abstract

Lois Lowry’s The Giver has been acclaimed as “one of the greatest novels in 1990s for children” and a rich source of timely and heated themes such as utopia/dystopia, sameness/diversity, control/freedom, society/individual, and rules/choices. At first glance, however, the plot and language of this novel seem flat and simple. Although Lowry intended to write “a good story,” oddly enough, due to the mostly simple language and flat structure, one may question whether The Giver is actually a good story. This study starts with this question and attempts to interpret the implications of subtle changes in style and sentence structure throughout this novel, as language and style are significant components of the text. Next, this paper deals with the agents that make such changes possible, and the values these agents can elicit. The straightforward style of The Giver depicting the protagonist’s community and its citizens differs in a variety of expressions, figurative language, and lyrical tone from the style used to describe the cultural and historical memories transmitted to the protagonist, Jonas, by the giver. While Jonas’s consciousness and critical thinking about his society grow through his lived experience of memories including painful memories of the society’s erased past, the lexical and syntactic style becomes more colorful, diverse, sensory, vibrant, and figurative. Through a stylistic examination of The Giver, this study explores how memory leads to maturity and wisdom, and how the protagonist’s growth coincides with the depth of emotion and the diversity of language used to describe his environment and experience. Thus, the educational values of The Giver are reinforced by the power of collective memory and figurative language.