ВОШТАНЕ ФИГУРЕ САМООТУЂЕЊА: ЛИКОВИ ИРАЦА И ЕНГЛЕЗА У ЗБИРЦИ КРАТКИХ ПРИЧА ВЕСТИ ИЗ ИРСКЕ ВИЛИЈАМА ТРЕВОРА
WAX FIGURES OF SELF-ALIENATION: IRISH AND ENGLISH CHARACTERS IN WILLIAM TREVOR’S SHORT STORY COLLECTION THE NEWS FROM IRELAND

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to define the essential features of Irish and English characters in William Trevor’s short story collection The News from Ireland (1986). All the stories in the collection are based upon the moral, spiritual and social epiphany of characters caused by the unfortunate and tragic twists and turns of fate. By means of a mimetic literary method and a psycho-ethical portrayal, the author forges his characters on the front line of the archetypal battle between the good and the evil in man and nature, Ireland and England, the country and the city, the old-world religiousness and the new-world loss of faith. The writer abandons a wider social landscape in order to focus his attention on insignificant, isolated and alienated individuals, all of whom are simultaneously battling with the lack of meaning in life and bare survival. The startling plight of all Trevor’s antiheroes initiates their introspective evaluation until the cathartic self-awareness is achieved. The most striking character transformations occur on life’s by-paths which irreversibly lead from virtue to sin, from innocence to experience, from the collective and general to the individual and personal. The Irish characters are the antiheroes of the backward and lethargic Irish countryside, and their predicament stems from the personal fate as well as the backwardness, xenophobia, religious dogmatism (Catholic and Protestant) and chauvinism of their native environment. Conversely, the English characters are the antiheroes of a megalopolis in which people sacrifice all that is human for the relentless progress of civilization and the creation of the dehumanized society projected in Orwellian anti-utopias.

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