Trauma as a determinant of the structure of personality and mentality of the society in modern Russia – based on the character of the novel “The Hounding” by Sasha Filipenko

Abstract

Trauma is one of the key concepts of the analysis of the construction of the character in “The Hounding”, the novel published in 2016 by Belarusian and Russian writer, Sasha Filipenko. One of the main characters of this novel is Lev Smyslov, who should be considered as a certain type of a member of modern post-Soviet society, who had to meet the new, unstable reality being a result of socio-political changes in the last decades of the 20th century. Trauma becomes the base for the process of formation of Lev’s personality: painful tests he came through at the 1990s had a deforming effect on his consciousness, life aspirations and predetermined his future. His engrossing desire is to be a part of the upper class – and he is ready to pay any price for it. The traumatic experience changes the inner world of the character and becomes the cause of his incurable fears as well as his sophisticated cruelty, which let him destroy other people’s life.