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Abstract: The article carries out a comparative analysis of the artistic concepts of the “homo traditor” (man traitor) on the material of Maxim Gorky’s short story “Karamora” and Evgeny Vodolazkin’s novel “Chagin”. It reveals a system of matches in the writers’ analysis of the homo traditor phenomenon such as: the open declaration of the characters’ real prototypes, the similarity of the short story and novel problem-thematic complex, the presence of the socio-political context characterized by the turbulent time, and the subjection of the plot to the scrupulous investigation of the reasons that push a man to become an informer. It is shown that in both works the phenomenon of betrayal is linked to the motifs of play, duplicity, unreliability of reality, and mystification; and the chosen method of narrative organization is the same: the writers construct the text according to the principle of the stream of consciousness of other people. Despite the problem-thematic and plot-compositional comparability of the works selected, the analysis of the author’s position has led to the conclusion that in assessing the essence of snitching, the authors of the 20th and 21st centuries demonstrate differences that are significant for different epochs. While Gorky focuses on the theory of meanness and its ethical failure, Vodolazkin centers on the idea of sin, the path of redemption and the possibility of forgiveness.

About the author(s) :

Tatyana A. Snigireva

Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin

The Institute of History and Archaeology, Ural branch of Russian Scientific Academy (Ekaterinburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3795-963X

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 09.12.2024; date of publication: 28.03.2025

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