Abstract

Kim, Nam-cheon's novels <The Aquarium of Love> and <August 15,1945> groped for positive human figures in the confusion of World War and Liberation. This study aims to explain these texts at the point that what means the heroines' culture and practice. We aims to explain the meaning of private love and public practice that Yi, Kyeong-hee, daughter of a munitions plutocrats intimate Japanese Empire and Bark,Mun-kyeong, daughter of a fighter for national independence against Japanese Empire showed at the last years of Imperial domination and at the days of just liberation. In <The Aquarium of Love>, the heroine Yi,Kyeong-hee's love involves not rejection and criticism on her father as a munitions plutocrats intimate Japanese Empire but criticism and enlightenment on her lover, an intellectual as a nihilist. The other side, in <August 15, 1945> the heroine Bark, Mun-kyeong's love appears that she cuts off her father, a fighter for national independence through expropriating from her lover's marxism ideology lack criticism. In these novels, the heroines' lovers are both technocrats and intellectuals so they are estranged from their techincal jobs with debt perception on the liberation society. With this change, they show patriarchal figures that Kim, Gwang-ho oppressed his wife's passion for public practice and Kim,Ji-won destroyed his lover's private desire for love. In <August 15, 1945>,Kyeong-hee's public passion changed private acts and Mun-kyeong'sprivate desire changed public practice, so Kyeong-hee's critical culture becomes a depravity case and Mun-kyeong's culture becomes an adaptation case. In their worlds, public passion for political practice was not in accord with private desire for love. An educated woman with desire was braked, becamed a depraved one or a non-sexual one.