INTERPRETATION OF DEATH IN THE CH. PALAHNIUK’S ARTISTIC WORLD

Abstract

The article is devoted to the interpretation of the phenomenon of death in contemporary American literature on the example of Ch. Palahniuk’s novels. The article analyzes the approaches to the phenomenon of death in different fields of knowledge such as philosophy, sociology, medicine. We describe the overview of the “life after death” theme in native and foreign literature. The place of the phenomenon of death in the artistic world and the influence of this phenomenon on the attitude of the characters to each other are in the focus of our attention. Death in the artistic world defines the characters’ relations, their presence / absence on different levels of the artistic world, the process of transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead and vice versa. The process of heroes’ formation in the world of the living and in the world of the dead depends on the representation of the phenomenon of death in the works of Ch. Palahniuk. The boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead is almost invisible and the transition between the worlds is done according to certain laws of the art world, followed by the characters of the novels. This article discusses several Ch. Palahniuk’s novels written in different periods of his oeuvre. The article examines the differences and similarities in the author's interpretation of the death and its significance in the early (“Fight Club”, “Lullaby”) and the latest (“Damned”, “Doomed”) novels. In the early novels of Charles Palahniuk death is a physiological process with anatomical details, but at the same time dying is the soul leaving the body. The latest novels of the author differ from the early ones as they demonstrate to the reader not only the life and its ending, but also the life after death.