"Lullaby" by Kim Chi-won
This is an excerpt from the paper...
In the story "Lullaby" by Kim Chi-won, the cause of the death of the wife is deliberately ambiguous, with the possibilities including the effects of a supernatural force, suicide, or murder. Each of these possibilities is supportable in the story. The woman clearly has suicide on her mind in the period before her death and can be seen as having ample reason for wanting to escape from the life she leads with her insensitive and at times violent husband. He beats her on her last night alive--did he kill her and place her in the pond? The hints of a supernatural force could be imaginary or they could be real, though there is good reason to see them as real because the husband knows about the stories surrounding the house while the wife does not, yet she also hears the voices from the pond. Some combination of these possibilities is also possible--the wife may be attracted by the supernatural voices yet kill herself, leaving the husband at least morally guilty of murder for the way he treated her. The fact that the woman has been seeking escape for some time is evident in her thoughts as she looks over the new house: There were times, as when she slid open the door of their rented room and saw the sunlight slant into the garden, that she wanted to leave with he daughter, dressed just as they were, for some back-country place on Cheju Island or in the Ch'ungch'ong, or Cholla, or Kangwon regions. And sometimes she realized with a start that these thoughts of leaving the wor
. . .
an earlier family reportedly had. The older couple lives in harmony with each other and with the house, while the younger couple ar not in harmony with one another and so are not in harmony with the house. The husband hears the story of the boy who died of a headache in the house and decides that there are all sorts of explanations for such an event, not all of them supernatural.
Even though the wife is shown to have many reasons for suicide, there are several reasons to see the supernatural influence as real. The husband never tells the wife about the old stories, but when she is cast out of the house, she gets a headache and hears the voices before she goes to the pond and drowns. This might be seen as only he imagination except for the fact that the husband also hears the voices speaking directly to him. The two are in different places at the time, and the story shifts from one perspective to another, showing that husband and wife are hearing these voices independently. The return of the voices at the end, calling specifically to the husband, could be attributed otherwise to the action of a guilty conscience. However, the fact that the voices are real does not mean that the woman did not follow their lead because the
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Cholla Kangwon, Kim Chi-won, hears voices, Seal Press, advice friends relatives, , leaving world, supernatural voices, voices calling, suicide murder, husband hears, real husband, wife's death, supernatural force, house couple,
Approximate Word count = 1396
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
