Bezhan H. The motive of the Holocaust in contemporary American and Russian literature (W. Styron, J. Foer, A. Kuznetsov, V. Grossman).

The object is a novel by William Styron ("Sophie's Choice"), J. Foer ("Everything is illuminated"), A. Kuznetsov ("Babin Yar") and V. Grossman ("Life and Fate"). The purpose is the study of the leading strategies' images of the Holocaust in American and Russian literature. The methods - comparative, typological comparisons, phenomenological. The study of texts by W. Styron ("Sophie's Choice"), J. Foer ("Everything is illuminated"), A. Kuznetsov ("Babin Yar") and V. Grossman ("Life and Fate") made it possible to identify the common and different in the interpretation of Holocaust' events by American and Russian writers of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21 st century. The motivational complex of Catastrophe's reflection that was chosen as a subject of the study due to the fact that by documenting events relating to the coverage of the Holocaust (A. Kuznetsov), literature was the use of the Holocaust motive in the image of the dictatorial regime (V. Grossman), ideology of racism (W. Styron), multicultural problems (J. Foer). It was proven in the paper that: if the authors of the first works about Holocaust sought to establish the fact of the genocide of the Jewish people, in the next decade writers mainly used Holocaust motive as an additional plot motion; if Russian writers, linking the Holocaust with Hitler's and Stalin's dictatorships, interpreted it as the tragedy of the country, the American writers preferred strategy such as a) initial acquaintance with the facts of the "unknown war"; b) the use of motive war-Holocaust-gas chamber to enhance the plot into a modern theme. The scope is learning process