RELIGION IN IDENTITY CRISES OF NOVELS CHARACTERS O. ZABUZHKO

Abstract

Religion is a phenomenon that is currently being reinterpreted because of cultural postmodern processes and the extraordinary challenges of life during martial law. Literature and model of the identity crises in the artistic text allow us to trace the potential role and possibilities of religion in overcoming such crises. In several novels by Oksana Zabuzhko, religion plays a different role in modeling the overcoming of identity crises. In The Museum of Abandoned Secrets, the author models the existential crisis associated with the challenges of World War II and the positive role of religion in overcoming these crises (“Zvir”, “Yaroslav”, etc.). There is also a model of the negative role of religion (“Rachel”). In Book of Genesis Chapter Four, religion also plays a positive role in helping the character Abel determine the space with which he will identify. In the works Fieldwork In Ukrainian Sex and Alien Woman, religion appears in the context of the crisis of identity in creativity and the ability to be authors: religion here performs the role of an attempt to delineate the boundaries beyond which both writers are unable to cross, since then God is the prerogative as the greatest author. Religion also plays the role of a marker in the crisis episodes when the characters are identified with the most important values in the tests Fieldwork In Ukrainian Sex (narrator) and The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (Andriyan). In The Tale of the Viburnum Pipe, religion, on the one hand, is the cultural background for the main conflict of the work between good and evil, and on the other, it is the main cause of murder and rejection by society: Hannusya kills Olena to take revenge on God for not being chosen. Therefore, religion has different roles and potential for overcoming identity crises: a constructive impact, a marker for identifying valuable aspects of the character, a cultural background, and a destructive element to be rejected.