Isolation and Alienation in Wings and A Room of Strangers

Abstract

This comparative study analysed Wings of Yi Sang and A Room of Strangers of Choi In-ho together. Though Wings and A Room of Strangers have a 35-year gap between the publication dates, but these stories have a common theme and literary trend; First, the two stories depict humans who are alienated from modern capitalist society, and second, both works contain modernist elements that include surrealism and existentialism. Therefore, this essay examined Wings and A Room of Strangers in two aspects: surrealist technique and existentialist philosophy, focusing on the motifs of ‘room’ and ‘relationship’. In both stories, rooms are main spaces and very important to imply the themes, and male characters suffer from self-division because of relational failure with their wives. These two works, showing similar spatial motifs and relational structures, present each aspect of modernism in the 1930s and 1970s. Wings as a modernist story in the 30s reveals self-consciousness and flow of consciousness, while Room of Strangers marks the beginning of the postmodern era through the literary formation of fetishism and self-division. Even if it were clear that two authors–Yi Sang and Choi In-ho as modernist writers share the narrative techniques and motifs, the use and effect of surrealism are represented differently in their respective works - Wings and A Rooms of Stranger, and the status of the subject and self is also different. In conclusion, this study found that the theme of modernist literature changes with the times, and that the individual works of the two modernist writers were uniquely created according to the different situation of the times and the literary character of the writer.