Original scientific paper
The Mechanism of Civilizational Evil in the Concept of War Thematics
Bojana Obradović
; University of Montenegro
Abstract
This paper examines the philosophy of evil through the representation of war in two historical novel cycles: Mikhail A. Sholokhov's Silent Don and Mihailo Lalić's war tetralogy (War Luck, Prisoners, Until the Mountain Turns Green, and Looking Down onto the Roads). The analysis focuses on the similarities in their construction of a Manichaean worldview, in which the conflict between good and evil serves as a fundamental organizing principle. Drawing on philosophical studies of evil and the theoretical framework of structuralism, the paper explores the role and function of literary characters according to their participation in actions that reveal the predominance of evil over good. Proceeding from the assumption that literary representations of evil seek to illuminate not only the nature of evil but also the nature of humanity itself, the study adopts an interdisciplinary philosophical and literary-theoretical approach. It examines the narrative patterns through which characters are constructed and demonstrates how these patterns position them within a Manichaean model of the world, thereby problematizing the perpetual struggle between two opposing entropic forces.
Keywords
philosophy of evil; malign aggression; war narratives; character construction; dualism
Hrčak ID:
349664
URI
Publication date:
23.7.2026.
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