미래는 끝나지 않았다: 마가렛 애트우드와 김초엽 소설에 나타난 지구 종말이후의 이야기들

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an eruption of fiction depicting the end of the world and the survival of a remnant of humanity. Contemporary women writers are participating in this apocalyptic trend, but their works differ from the traditional apocalyptic novels written by males. While traditional apocalypse fictions concentrate on the restoration of what has been lost and mourn for the past, contemporary women writers transform the apocalyptic genre to imagine possible stories of the humanity after the apocalyptic event. MaddAddam trilogy of Margaret Atwood and Greenhouse at the End of the Earth by Kim Cho Yeop share a number of themes, discourses, and narrative techniques as follows: a multi-layered narrative, a cast of post-human, cyborg and multi-species characters, an alternative community of new humankind, and the possibility of eco-utopia. Cobb-house of God’s Gardener in MaddAddam trilogy and the greenhouse in Kim Cho Yeop’s novel were a type of eco-utopia constructed in the post-apocalyptic Earth in order to establish a new community to co-exist with other species. As Donna Haraway’s new term, Chthulucene implies, all living things and all matters are interconnected and human beings should interact with other species in order to “stay with the trouble” in their novels. And post-apocalyptic fictions serve as meta-narratives that illustrate the storytelling process. By imagining future worlds and disclosing their narrative construction, a novel forces readers reevaluate the imminent problems of humanity and gives them the opportunity to change the present for a better post-human world. Symbiotic co-existence with animals, multi-species, cyborgs and non-human beings is feasible through interactive relationships with other earthly beings. In the post-apocalyptic novels of Margaret Atwood and Kim Cho Yeop, post-human narratives are not concluded, and there is hope even after the end of the world.