영어로 읽는 고전 _ 리지웰 칼럼의 무법자들
리지웰 컬럼의 『무법자들』은 20세기 초에 쓰인 소설이다. 서사는 무법과 금주령 시대의 캐나다 대초원을 배경으로, 법 집행관과 범죄자들 사이의 투쟁에 초점을 맞춘다. 특히 이야기는 밀수품과 불법 활동이 만연한 지역에서 법을 수호하겠다고 결의한 스탠리 파일스 감찰관을 중심으로 전개된다. 소설의 서두는 파일스 감찰관이 혹독한 여름 더위 속 먼지 날리는 기차 승강장을 순찰하며 밀수 술을 실은 화물 열차의 도착을 기다리는 장면을 소개한다. 그는 철도 역무원 헌틀리와 대화를 나누며, 지역 화물 열차의 불규칙한 운행 일정과 불법 거래가 야기하는 증가하는 문제들을 논의하면서 희극적이면서도 심각한 요소가 공존하는 긴장된 분위기를 조성한다. 우리는 또한 운행 중인 화물에 대담한 강도를 계획하는 무법자들을 포함한 다른 인물들의 동기와 성격도 엿볼 수 있다. 거친 대초원 풍경 속에서 정의와 생존을 향한 끊임없는 추격전에 법 집행관과 무법자 모두를 얽어매는 범죄, 의무, 추적의 긴박한 이야기를 위한 무대가 마련된다.
Classics Read in English _ The Law Breakers by Ridgwell Cullum
In The Law-Breakers, Ridgwell Cullum plunges readers into the sun-scorched expanse of the Canadian prairie, where the law is a thin line drawn in dust and the men who break it fear nothing but the noose.
At the novel's center stands Inspector Stanley Fyles?steadfast, sharp-eyed, and utterly committed to imposing order on a land that resists it. The era is one of prohibition, and the prairie has become a smuggler's highway, with contraband liquor flowing like underground rivers through every freight line and backroad. Fyles has made it his personal war to dam that river, one arrest at a time.
The story opens under a punishing summer sun. Fyles waits on a dusty train platform, trading dry banter with Huntly, the local railroad agent, as they watch for the arrival of a freight suspected of carrying illegal cargo. Their conversation dances between the mundane frustrations of unreliable schedules and the deadly serious business of interception. Meanwhile, in the shadows beyond the tracks, outlaws are already plotting?a brazen heist on a moving train that will set lawman and criminal on a collision course.
Cullum establishes a world where duty and danger are inseparable companions, and where the vast, indifferent prairie serves as both battleground and witness. The chase is about to begin, and neither side intends to lose.
Among the contents
There was no shade anywhere. The terrible glare of the summer sun beat down upon the whole length of the wooden platform at Amberley. Hot as was the dry, bracing air, it was incomparable with the blistering intensity of heat reflected from the planking, which burned through to the soles of the feet of the uniformed man who paced its length, slowly, patiently.
This sunburnt, gray. eyed man, with his loose, broad shoulders, his powerful, easy. moving limbs, seemed quite indifferent to the irritating climatic conditions of the moment. Even the droning of the worrying mosquitoes had no power to disturb him. Like everything else unpleasant in this distant northwestern land, he accepted these things as they came, and brushed them aside for the more important affairs he was engaged upon.
He gazed out across the wide monotony of prairie with its undulating wavelets, a tawny green beneath the scorching summer sun.
