The Revenge Narratives and Community of Memories in the Drama A Hawk

Boram Im^*

Department of Korean Language and Literature, Kangwon National University, South Korea

* Corresponding author

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the multiple journeys of the main character, Wang Genjo, as a narratives of the return to home in the drama A Hawk and to examine the rhetorical strategy through which the ethics of memory that appears in this process are requested by the audience. In order to understand A Hawk as a multiple narratives, I present the relationship between the victim and the perpetrators in this narratives as a confrontation between memory and forgetting, and seek to explain the ethics of memory entailed by this relationship. What is particularly problematic about this drama is the method of revenge of the victim, Wang Genjo, who visits the perpetrators and does not repay the evil he received or show his wounds and project them onto the perpetrators, but instead directs his revenge toward himself to generate the energy to transform himself. Ultimately, this energy acts as a comprehensive force that connects the misaligned relationship between the perpetrator and victim. In this plural narratives, the problem of memory is important for Wang Genjo in exacting revenge. Considering that Wang Genjo’s personal history drives the drama, memory becomes an important device for Wang Genjo to recall past events. Memory is an activity composing the past. This activity involves the past-present relationship, not just the past. Thus, the past in memory is inevitably reconstructed under the influence of the current personal and social situations one faces. In the process of remembering past events, the attitudes of the victim, Wang Genjo, and the perpetrators appear differently. Wang Genjo asks the perpetrators to remember the incident, which the perpetrators ask Wang Genjo to forget. The audience thereby gains sympathy with the historical events that inevitably create the boundaries between memory and forgetting, and looks forward to the artist’s new method of epistemological transformation that allows them to cross these boundaries. This article concludes by noting that this method leads to the formation of a community of memories.

Keywords:

Drama, A Hawk, revenge narratives, narratives of the return to home, memory ethics, memory community

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Biographical Note

Boram, Im Ph.D., Researcher, Department of Korean Language and Literature, Kangwon National University, Korea. She is studying various ways to relate closely to others as a language. Email: jinjjaworld@naver.com