THE THEME OF CHILDHOOD AND CHILD CHARARCTERS IN THE WORKS BY TEUVO PAKKALY AND A. P. CHEKHOV

Abstract

Books about children that can hardly be called childish, although the main characters in them are children, invariably arouse reader’s interest. Books reveal a child’s inner world, his attitude toward the surrounding reality, the problematic relations between children and adults. Literature on children is represented in almost all national written cultures, but the history of referring to it is due to various causes of social and social development, reasons of a religious, moral and ethical nature. In the article, the author refers to the literature from the second half of the 19th century, to the novels by the Finnish writer Teuvo Pakkala and draws analogies with the novels by the Russian writer A. P. Chekhov. Pakkala was the first in the history of Finnish literature to address the topic of children’s attitudes in the context of adult perception. The world of the children and the world of the adults are most often in antagonistic terms with each other, which are manifested in the perception of reality and in relation to it. These worlds exist in parallel spaces. The intersection of these worlds occurs most often in the mental space, namely in the memories of an adult of his childhood. Both writers see the child as a person, not an object of education. The positions assumed by children in different national societies vary. Pakkala’s heroes often act collectively. The child is surrounded by peers. Chekhov’s characters act alone, being isolated from their peers. It is difficult for them to defend their right to exist and their position in life. Chekhov’s characters most often become the object of social or family violence, despotism, a victim of adult self-affirmation. In the novels by Pakkala, the positive dynamics of the development of relations between children and adults dominate: children can influence the adult world. Their discouraging sincerity and spontaneity compel adults to reconsider the principles, prohibitions and attitudes invented by them and help to establish contact with children. The world of Chekhov’s child is often tragic, hopeless and lonely. The writer’s work on the language and style of the work is very interesting. For the stylization of children’s speech, Finnish writer Pakkala changes the syntactic structure of a sentence, showing the immediacy and liveliness of children’s speech, comes up with funny words with which children, for example, endow their “winners”. The heroes of Chekhov’s stories are closed in themselves. Their inner monologue speech turns into itself and is a little like a nursery.