THE PROBLEM OF MORAL SELF-PRESERVATION IN THE NOVEL "OBITEL" ("RESIDENT") BY Z. PRILEPIN
Labour camp prose of the twentieth century is focused on the moral victory over the system of lone heroes who believed in the power of law, or their inner force. In the novel “Obitel” (“Resident”) by Z. Prilepin, the problem of moral self-preservation is represented as a process of overcoming one’s personal hell: the psychology of the novel is connected with the exposure of the brutal truth that man is helpless when confronting the ruthless system of extermination and one’s own reflections about being sinful. When in labour camp, Prilepin’s protagonist faces the choices, leading to his salvation: either aid the system, or dissolve in the mass of biological organisms and lose one’s moral reflectiveness, or repent spiritually and accept his fate. He denies moral salvation and chooses the false way of physical salvation, which leads him to existential despair, to ontological orphanhood and is equal to physical death. In the end, the protagonist chooses the path of self-sacrifice and preservation of human qualities. The issues of faith and faithlessness, guilt and sin, humility and renewal are key issues in terms of the problems raised by the author, they actualize the symbolism of the father, Gospel, icon and the symbolic understatement of the images of the basket and the rat. In the authors conception, inevitable moral degradation in the cruel conditions of Stalin's labour camps becomes the condemnation of the totalitarian system.