영어로 읽는 고전 _ 리지웰 칼럼의 아버지의 아들
리지웰 컬럼의 『아버지의 아들』은 20세기 초에 쓰인 소설이다. 이야기는 무분별한 생활로 상당한 빚을 진 후 인생의 결정적인 갈림길에 서게 된 젊은 청년 고든 카보이를 중심으로 전개된다. 부유한 철도 재벌인 그의 아버지는 아들에게 마지막 기회를 주며, 집을 떠나 6개월 안에 상당한 금액을 벌어오라고 요구하고, 이로써 고든은 예상치 못한 도전적인 여정에 오르게 된다. 책의 서두에서 고든과 그의 아버지 사이에 긴장이 고조되는데, 그들은 고든의 무책임한 행동과 사치스러운 생활 방식의 결과에 직면한다. 대화는 애정과 높은 기대로 점철된 그들의 깊은 유대를 드러낸다. 몇 차례 격렬한 언쟁 끝에 고든은 마지못해 아버지의 도전을 받아들인다: 12개월 안에 10만 달러를 벌어오라는 것인데, 그는 대담하게 이를 6개월로 협상하고 단 5천 달러의 밑천만 가지고 떠난다. 이 결정적인 설정은 그를 불확실함으로 가득 찬 길 위에 올려놓으며, 그는 개척지 생활의 거칠고 험난한 존재 속에서 행운을 찾기를 바라며 스네이크스 폴로 향하는 여정에 오른다. 서사는 자아 발견, 젊은 성인기의 고투, 그리고 특권과 세상의 가혹한 현실 사이의 극명한 대조라는 주제 속에서 펼쳐진다.
Classics Read in English _ The Son of his Father by Ridgwell Cullum
In The Son of his Father, Ridgwell Cullum crafts a tale of reckoning, redemption, and the making of a man from the ruins of privilege.
Gordon Carbhoy has lived carelessly and spent lavishly, shielded by his father's railroad fortune. But debts have mounted, patience has worn thin, and the day of accounting has arrived. His father?stern yet loving, disappointed yet unwilling to abandon hope?delivers an ultimatum: prove yourself or be cut off forever.
The challenge is simple in words, brutal in execution. Earn $100,000 in twelve months, starting with nothing but what a man can carry. Gordon, proud and perhaps foolish, raises the stakes himself. Six months. Five thousand dollars. No safety net.
And so he leaves the gilded world he has known and sets out for Snake's Fall?a place where the frontier swallows soft men whole and fortunes are carved from grit and desperation. Here, there are no family names to hide behind, no accounts to draw from. Every dollar must be earned, every respect must be won.
Cullum sets his young protagonist on a collision course with reality. The contrast is stark: ballrooms give way to bunkhouses, tailored suits to trail dust. What emerges is a story of transformation?not merely financial, but spiritual. Gordon must discover whether he is truly his father's son, or merely a shadow living off borrowed light.
The clock is ticking. The wilderness waits. And the boy who left home must decide what kind of man will return.
Among the contents
"To wine, women and gambling, at the age of twenty-four?one hundred thousand dollars. That's your bill, my boy, and?I've got to pay it."
James Carbhoy leaned back smiling, his half-humorous eyes squarely challenging his son, who was lounging in a luxurious morocco chair at the other side of the desk.
As the moments passed without producing any reply, he reached towards the cabinet at his elbow and helped himself to a large cigar. Without any scruple he tore the end off it with his strong teeth and struck a match.
"Well?"
Gordon Carbhoy cleared his throat and looked serious. In spite of his father's easy, smiling manner he knew that a crisis in his affairs had been reached. He understood the iron will lying behind the pleasant steel-gray eyes of his parent. It was a will that flinched at nothing, a will that had carved for its owner a great fortune in America's most strenuous financial arena, the railroad world. He also knew the only way in which to meet his father's challenge with any hope of success. Above everything else the millionaire demanded courage and manhood?manhood as he understood it?from those whom he regarded well.
