부스 타킹턴의 인디애나의 신사

영어로 읽는 고전 _ 부스 타킹턴의 인디애나의 신사
부스 타킹턴의 "인디애나의 신사"는 19세기 후반에 쓰인 소설입니다. 인디애나 주의 가상 마을 플랫빌을 배경으로, 이 이야기는 다양한 지역 인물들을 소개하며 야망, 정치, 그리고 소도시의 삶을 탐구합니다. 이야기의 중심에는 존 하클리스가 있는데, 그는 동부에서 온 젊은 남자로 어려움을 겪고 있는 "칼로우 카운티 헤럴드" 신문을 활성화하려는 꿈을 안고 플랫빌에 도착합니다. 소설의 시작에서, 하클리스의 도착은 이 외부인에게 호기심을 갖는 마을 사람들 사이에 파문을 일으킵니다. 그가 정착하면서, 그는 소도시 정치의 도전, 특히 무법과 협박을 대표하는 지역 집단인 "화이트 캡스"의 영향력에 직면합니다. 타킹턴은 플랫빌의 평평한 풍경과 주민들의 기이함을 생생하게 묘사하면서, 전통에 깊이 뿌리내린 공동체에서 자신의 길을 개척하려는 하클리스의 내적 갈등을 보여줍니다. 첫 장들은 하클리스의 투쟁, 언론 영역뿐만 아니라 새로운 환경의 복잡성과 그가 그 안에서 형성할 관계들을 헤쳐나가는 모습을 위한 무대를 마련합니다.

Classics Read in English _ The Gentleman from Indiana by Booth Tarkington
"The Gentleman from Indiana" by Booth Tarkington, written in the late 19th century, takes readers to the fictional town of Plattville, Indiana. The novel introduces a colorful cast of local characters while exploring themes of ambition, political maneuvering, and the intricate dynamics of small-town America.
At the heart of the story is John Harkless, an ambitious young man from the East Coast who arrives in Plattville determined to breathe new life into the struggling "Carlow County Herald" newspaper. His arrival immediately creates a buzz among the townspeople, who view this outsider with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion, and hope.
As Harkless begins to settle into his new role, he quickly confronts the realities of small-town politics, particularly the troubling influence of the "White Caps" – a local group that operates through intimidation and lawlessness to maintain their power. Their presence serves as both a literal threat to Harkless and a symbolic representation of the resistance to change that he must overcome.
Tarkington masterfully depicts Plattville's expansive, flat landscape and the quirky personalities of its inhabitants. These vivid descriptions provide the perfect backdrop for Harkless's internal struggles as he attempts to carve out his place in a community deeply rooted in tradition and set in its ways.
The opening chapters effectively establish the tensions that will drive the narrative forward – Harkless's professional challenges in reviving the newspaper, his personal journey of adaptation to rural Midwestern life, and the complex relationships he begins to form with the townspeople who will ultimately shape his experience in this new world.

Among the contents
There is a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagrarian Eastern travellers, glancing from car-windows, shudder and return their eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying caparisons of a Pullman to the monotony without. The landscape lies interminably level: bleak in winter, a desolate plain of mud and snow; hot and dusty in summer, in its flat lonesomeness, miles on miles with not one cool hill slope away from the sun. The persistent tourist who seeks for signs of man in this sad expanse perceives a reckless amount of rail fence; at intervals a large barn; and, here and there, man himself, incurious, patient, slow, looking up from the fields apathetically as the Limited flies by. Widely separated from each other are small frame railway stations—sometimes with no other building in sight, which indicates that somewhere behind the adjacent woods a few shanties and thin cottages are grouped about a couple of brick stores.
On the station platforms there are always two or three wooden packing-boxes, apparently marked for travel, but they are sacred from disturbance and remain on the platform forever; possibly the right train never comes along. They serve to enthrone a few station loafers, who look out from under their hat-brims at the faces in the car-windows with the languid scorn a permanent fixture always has for a transient, and the pity an American feels for a fellow-being who does not live in his town. Now and then the train passes a town built scatteringly about a court-house, with a mill or two humming near the tracks.

서평(Book Review)
부스 타킹턴의 "인디애나 출신의 신사"는 19세기 말 미국 중서부 소도시의 정치적, 사회적 역학관계를 통찰력 있게 그려낸 작품이다. 동부에서 온 젊은 언론인 존 하클리스가 인디애나의 작은 마을 플랫빌에서 쇠퇴해가는 지역 신문을 되살리려는 노력을 중심으로, 타킹턴은 변화에 대한 저항, 지역사회의 결속력, 그리고 외부인이 공동체 내에서 자신의 위치를 찾아가는 과정을 섬세하게 포착한다. 이 소설은 미국의 지방 생활에 대한 사실적인 묘사와 함께, 꿈과 야망이 전통과 충돌할 때 발생하는 긴장감을 효과적으로 전달한다.

Booth Tarkington's "The Gentleman from Indiana" offers an insightful portrayal of the political and social dynamics in a small Midwestern American town at the end of the 19th century. Following the efforts of John Harkless, a young journalist from the East who attempts to revive a declining local newspaper in the small Indiana town of Plattville, Tarkington deftly captures the resistance to change, the bonds of community, and the process by which an outsider finds his place within a tight-knit society. The novel delivers a realistic depiction of provincial American life while effectively conveying the tension that arises when dreams and ambition collide with tradition.