Original scientific paper
HOW TO PROTECT CHILD IF WAR BREAKS OUT (theme: mother)
Julijana Matanović
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
Contemporary Croatian novel, characterized by its war-related central theme, provides a good example of how to explore a close relation between the interpretation and assessment of a text and the real-life experience of the reader. Moreover, the element of time is an essential factor in the process of reception and comprehension of the text. One of the most sensitive aspects of the war theme, from the author’s, as well as the reader’s, point of view, is the motive of mothers in the war. How to protect a child in the war environment is a question at the heart of numerous novel storylines. In seven novels written between 1992 and 2014, several patterns of mothers’ behavior are explored: from the one-dimensional mother who considers the act of saving her child as granted, through the mother who finds herself in an environment (a war prison camp) which destroys her sense of motherhood, to the woman who, despite not being a mother herself, saves another’s child in an act of heroism.
Keywords
war novel; historic novel; witness; time; experience; one-dimensional mother; child; family history
Hrčak ID:
190201
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2017.
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