Interpretation of the parable of the prodigal son in the story of V. M. Shukshin “Fellow countrymen”

Annotation

The article examines the originality of V. M. Shukshin’s creative interpretation of the parable of the prodigal son in the story about two brothers, the change in the semantic accents of the biblical invariant in the variation he created in the story “Countrymen”. The author examines the setting of his heroes in the face of the universe, the conjugation of social, moral, ontological problems in a single semantic node of the work, the creation of the image of the Russian national destiny in the twentieth century by means of poetics of a small genre. An appeal is made to the mythopoetic semantics of the narrative, to the context of the historical epoch with which the brothers are connected, to the outcome of their life and the choice of the elder brother, the scale of the author’s artistic thinking is comprehended.

Keywords

prodigal son, universe, being, death, conscience, soul, meaning of life, drama, people, power.

Literature

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