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IMAGE OF THE LEADING CHARACTER IN THE STORY OF VLADIMIR ZHELEZNIKOV “SCARECROW” // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2015. Issue 6 (159). P. 208-214

The authors analyse Zheleznikov’s story the “Scarecrow” written in the flourishing period of the writer (in the 1970s), and reveal the ways to bring out the image of the leading character, such as: showing the points of view of different subjects of speech including the storyteller; the comparison of names of characters and their inward nature, the comparison of the internal and external of characters; the comparison of characters’ behaviour with different animals; using allusion). The story fits into the context of searches of moral ideal in the Russian classical prose and in the literature contemporary with Zheleznikov. The writer puts the existential type of character in the centre, who is ready to defend the principles such as: non-resistance to evil by force, value of human dignity, mercy, belief in the triumph of kindness, in an extreme situation.

Keywords: the youth literature, psychological prose, Zheleznikov, “the school novella”, “Scarecrow”, topic of cruelty, moral values, existential problematics, existential realism