A Mute's Chant Summary

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Similar to Yi Chongbun, the author showed another generation of victims suffering from the aftermaths of the war in Korea through the narrator, Changsu. In a political dimension, both Changsu and his aunt share the same sufferings where they are victimized by the government's strict enforcement of anticommunist policies. In Changsu's case, he is getting drafted to the army due to the police's suspicion on his involvement in the antigovernment movements. The military government during this time used national security as a method to suppress the democratization movements and criticisms against the government. After the Korean War, North Korea became the greatest enemy in the South, thus, the government could use the protection against the North …show more content…

Though each sound symbolizes different themes and significances, they are all connected at the end to implicate the same message. First clear symbol of the story is Changsu's encounter with a mute woman and her voice. "A Mute's Chant" begins with Changsu's letter to the woman he met at a public phone booth, clearly a mute who he did not expect to hear any sound from. Although the author does not introduce any detailed information about this woman other than her muteness and Changsu's encounter with her, she plays an important symbolic figure in the story. The mute woman's vocal acrobatics caught Changsu's attention, who has a habit of recording other people's conversations and sounds around him. To him, the mute woman's voice sounded as if they have been "risen from the depths of her bowels or to have been drawn out from the bottom of an abyss." As the mute woman performed her vocal acrobatics on the phone, Changsu was mesmerized by her sound and ends up writing her a letter without even knowing who she is. The mute woman, who even the audience are not given any detailed information about, might have been Changsu's imagination. It is unclear whether she actually exists or not, but to think that Changsu claims to have witnessed a mute woman singing is not only unrealistic but sounds nearly

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