Literary Truth of the Holodomor in the Novel «The Age of Red Ants» by T. Piankova

Abstract

Among the important tasks of modern humanities, one singles out textualization of trauma psychology as the entire traumatic experience of previous generations, imbedded into the mental map of Ukrainians, still remains not fully textualized, and the new genocide unleashed by Russia against Ukraine only exacerbates the situation. Given article is dedicated to the analysis of literary features of the novel "The Age of Red Ants" written by modern Ukrainian writer T. Piankova, as it has not been the object of literary studies yet. The article relies on the "trauma studies" methodology and explores narrative strategies, space-time modeling, ideological and literary meaning of macro- and microimages. Among the important literary devices creating the narrative background of the novel in question one should single out gradation of images. Resulting from the gradation levels in the narrative of characters, there comes forward the effect of extreme mental tension, exacerbation of suffering, inevitability of death, and all-encompassing dominance of the alimentary-aggressive code of alien psychology.