Earticle

Theodore Dreiser is considered one of America’s greatest naturalists. In Korea, Kim, Dong-In caused controversy about whether or not he was a naturalist, but he was a naturalist in his representative work, “Gamja (Potato).” These two writers have similarities in many ways, even though they never met nor knew each other in their life times. They had the common connection that they had been influenced by Honore de Balzac, the French naturalist. Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie (1900) and Kim, Dong-In’s short story “Gamja” (1925) have similarities. First, Sister Carrie and “Gamja” have similar plots and the relationships of Carrie-Drouet-Hurstwood are the same as the relationships of Boknyeo-Husband-Wangseobang. However, these relationships in the two works have some differences, too. Second, the main characters are indulged in a materialistic view of life and have a corrupted sexual morality. Third, immoral characters appear in these two works frequently. In conclusion, they both have immortal naturalistic works like Sister Carrie and “Gamja”.

This paper deals with two directions, which are the necessity of new translative strategies and introspection regarding the literally interpreting-equivalence principle and short culturological awareness inherent in Byungchul Kim’s translative works on Hemingway’s major novels. His chief achievements are like these: first, he was a prominent professor of American literature especially in Hemingway. He translated numerous Hemingway’s works into Korean language based on incomplete equivalence principle. Although his abundant works might be the result translated literally lacking in linguistic and culturological awareness, he is the incipient translator who concentrated on Hemingway's novels from 1950's to 1990's. Second, he researched the introduction of western literature into Korea with devoted endeavors for approximately 30 years. By the middle of 1950's after liberation and war, Korean government realized the urgency of introduction of American and English literature to strengthen the capitalistic culture. Under government's financial support and supervision for the systematic translative plan of American literature, many professors translated famous originals based on the weak equivalence theory. Some of them could not avoid in errors and plagiarism in their translative works without linguistic and culturological backgrounds. Such fundamental and serious problems in the translative process have not been disconnected until 2015.

Everyone knows and hears the name of 'Big Brother'. This popular name is from the Orwell's masterpiece 1984. In this novel, we can easily understand the situations of Oceania (or England). Individual life is demolished and the family ties are destroyed. History and documents are corrected according to the present situation. The meaning of language is changing and the numbers of the words are diminishing day after day. People of Oceania are rarely thinking about their situations. Their thinking abilities are diminishing, too. People do not have a clear sense of morality. And they seem to be losing their humanity slowly. These kinds of situations are happening in China, Korea and other countries nowadays. So we can think very highly of George Orwell's insight. Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. He was frightened of the advent of totalitarianism and the surveillance society. He saw totalitarianism as bringing history to a standstill and Big Brother was invincible. He worried about the system being common in the future. The totalitarian countries and surveillance societies are around us, NOW. We can prove this with the many examples all over the world. Big Brother knows the utmost detail of everything that you did or said; but the inner heart remained undetectable. We can say that out loud 'We don't want to be watched by any other human being.' It's better to be free rather than controlled by somebody. And nothing is impossible once we set out firm resolution.

In my view, there is no comparative studies of Lee Sang, a Korean novelist and Saul Bellow, an American novelist in Korea. That's because it's not easy to find something in common between two writers. Lee Sang was born in 1910 and Saul Bellow was born in 1915. They lived their own lives and they didn't know each other. But my special interest is Saul Bellow and Lee Sang has many common characteristics. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the same characteristics between Lee Sang and Saul Bellow. In exploring the question of same characters, this paper limited to consideration of “Nalgae” and Dangling Man. Lee Sang bears a curious likeness to Saul Bellow. Bellow and Lee Sang are externally and internally analogous to each other. Their similarities are divided into biological similarities and the similarities in plot. In biological aspect, they altogether lived very hard times in early lives and were financially embarrassed afterwards. They both were influenced by Fyodor M. Dostoevsky. It was the one main cause of their similarities. Their marriage lives were not happy and they had no good relationship with their wives. This was the result of the fact that they grew up without 'desirable father image.'In Dangling Man and “Nalgae”, these stories are told by the first person narrator 'Joseph' and 'Na(=I).' There are no specific plots or accidents in these two stories. The main characters are doing nothing and just killing times. They couldn't put away their childish acts like playing with matches and shoe polishing. Joseph and Na cannot make any change in their lives. These facts are the result of their isolation from the family and society. They both have identity problems, too. Joseph was a Canadian who wants to join the American Army. Lee Sang was a Korean who lived under the Japanese imperialism. They both are intellectuals and very speculative persons. They all suffer from environments. They also are men of no abilities in the matter of money. Above all their endings are very similar. The main characters admit their own lots and satisfied with their present situations.