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Abstract: The article presents a comparative analysis of Andrey Platonov’s play “Noah’s Ark (Cain’s Spawn)” and Alan Moore’s graphic novel “Watchmen”. The focus is on the common features in the depiction of the causes and forms of the apocalypse, which is the event core of the plots of both works. The first stage of the research covers the mechanism of “alternative history”, which takes place both in “Watchmen” and in Platonov’s play. Introducing real historical figures and events into the plot, the writers declare the situation of the approaching end of the world caused by the Cold War. The second stage is devoted to the conceptual triad “personal individualism – national exclusivity – conviction in God’s election”. The characters of the play and the graphic novel are endowed with saliently individualistic personal traits. At the same time, the characters are related to specific states (or nations). The egoism of each character conveys the conviction of a particular country in its own exclusivity and God-chosen nature. Platonov and Moore see the impossibility of humanity, represented by “exceptional” people, to conduct a constructive dialogue. As a result, the world is portrayed by the authors as noisy and chaotic. The significance of global cacophony in the context of the apocalyptic writers is also considered by the author at one of the stages of the work. The intertext analysis makes it possible to highlight not only the historical foundations for the similarity of the description of the apocalypse in the play and the graphic novel, but also the fundamental difference in its understanding by the Soviet writer and the British author. The years separating Platonov and Moore, life circumstances, as well as their belonging to different cultures (Soviet and British) set the grounds for a deepest divergence in the interpretation of the image of the human future, which is obviously embedded in the ideological layers of both texts. This point is considered by the author at the final stage of the study. The research is based on the achievements of the Platonov studies specialists who previously devoted their works to the author’s last play (N. M. Malygina, N. V. Kornienko, I. V. Kukulin, etc.), as well as on materials that offer an explanation of the social basis of mass science fiction literature of the 20th century (works by U. Eco, M. Dipaolo, etc.).

About the author(s) :

Anton A. Dolgov

Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-9125-4344

 

The research was carried out with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 23-28-00905 “Aesthetic meanings and fractal poetics of modern Russian literature: A. P. Platonov, L. M. Leonov, A. V. Ivanov”).

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 04.09.2023; date of publication: 31.10.2023.

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