The Study On The Characters’ Growth Mode In Yun Heung-Gil’s Growth Novels

Growth is the eternal theme of the mankind. It is a severe challenge for all the teenagers who are in transitional stage have to face. Because growth is a common culture phenomenon and a must life stage for individuals, growth novels as a special literature have occupied a space in the field of literature. And effected by the social and historical condition, Korean’s growth novels have a close connection with the war, and show a different look comparing to the western growth novels.Yun Heung-Gil is one of the writers of the Korean representative postwar literature, many of his works have the structure of growth novels, and the current studies on Yun Heung-Gil’s works most stay at the level of postwar literature, only a small parts were on the level of growth novels and didn’t form a complete system. So this thesis is based on the five novels,’The House of Twilight’,’Long Spell of Rain’,’Sheep’’When Does a Rainbow Appear’and’A Wild Flower in Memory’which were written in1970s to start the thesis, try to know the relevance between the novels from Yun Heung-Gil and the writer’s personal war experience, and try to make a full analysis of the characters’ growth mode, based on this to observe the meaning of Yun Heung-Gil’s growth novels.Because of physical and psychological development level of restrictions, the leading characters in his growth novels do not have the ability to recognize the true face of war in the world, and showing a childish face. These young narrators in the novels meet the phase of shocking experience and conflict while experiencing Korean War. They suffered family separation, fraud, violence and death. These setbacks and hardships changed the youth’s recognition of the world.The young characters enter the phase of maturity through the series of shocking experiences. Two features present the formation seen in Yun Heung-Gil’s novels:self-maturity through negative recognition of the world and positive prospect of compromising with the world with the help of assistants.This mode of growth is a result of two elements. Firstly, the characters have similarities in age. Sencondly, trials and setbacks are essential experiences for growing up.Yun Heung-Gil’s experience of war novels belong to the growth literature and after war literature. The analysis try to provide a new perspective and interpretation of future research on the Korean War literature.