The Degradation of Family Relations and the Tragedy of Human Fate in the Novel by Chingiz Aytmatov "The White Ship"

Abstract

This scholarly article is devoted to a comprehensive academic analysis of the degradation of family relationships in Chingiz Aytmatov’s short story The White Ship and its tragic impact on human destiny. In the context of twenty-first-century globalization, when the institution of the family as the moral core of society is subjected to serious challenges, the examination of this issue through literary works acquires particular relevance. The article argues that the inability of the family to function as a social and moral institution capable of protecting and spiritually supporting the child leads to a spiritual crisis not only for the individual, but for society as a whole.The primary object of this study is the novella The White Ship, whose thematic focus is centered on the disintegration of family bonds, the legitimation of violence, the loss of moral responsibility, and their impact on an individual’s life trajectory. The aim of the article is to identify the artistic modes of representation and the philosophical substance of the process of degradation of the family institution. To achieve this aim, methods of textual and figurative-semantic analysis were employed, along with socio-philosophical and psychological approaches and the interpretation of mythological motifs. In the course of the study, the image of the child (Nurgazy) in the novella is interpreted as a direct victim of the family crisis. The position of the old man Momun, based on passive humanism, as well as the family relations of Oroskul and Bekey, grounded in violence, are analyzed as artistic representations of degraded family models. The deformation of motherhood, family relations, and sacred human values through the mythological image of the Mother Deer is conceptualized as a tragedy of civilizational scale. In the concluding part of the article, it is substantiated that The White Ship is a work in which the family crisis is interpreted as a universal humanistic problem that retains its scholarly and social relevance in the context of contemporary global society. The findings of this study may serve as a theoretical and methodological foundation for further academic research in literary studies, the humanities, and the philosophy of the family.