Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika –
Зарубежная лингвистика и
лингводидактика – Foreign
Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Journal home page:
https://inscience.uz/index.php/foreign-linguistics
Comparative analysis of military characters in Uzbek and
English literary works
Malika SOATOVA
1
Uzbekistan State World Languages University
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Article history:
Received December 2024
Received in revised form
15 December 2024
Accepted 25 January 2025
Available online
15 February 2025
This study compares military characters in Uzbek and English
war literature, focusing on thematic and linguistic differences in
war narratives. Through an analysis of “Cry Behind the River”
(Q. Norqobil), “From Here to Eternity” (J. Jones), “The Thin Red
Line” (J. Jones), and “Uzbechka” (B. Abdug‘afur), the study
examines how cultural and historical contexts shape
representations of soldiers, civilians, women, and children.
Findings suggest that distinct linguistic and discursive structures
in each tradition reflect broader cultural perspectives on war and
its aftermath.
2181-3663/© 2024 in Science LLC.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47689/2181-3701-vol3-iss1-pp59-62
This is an open-access article under the Attribution 4.0 International
(CC BY 4.0) license (
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.ru
Keywords:
war literature,
lexical choices,
narrative perspective,
war literature,
heroism,
war narratives.
O‘zbek va ingliz adabiy asarlaridagi harbik xarakterlarning
qiyosiy tahlili
ANNOTATSIYA
Kalit so‘zlar:
urush adabiyoti,
leksik tanlovlar,
hikoya nuqtai nazari,
urush adabiyoti,
qahramonlik,
urush hikoyalari.
Ushbu tadqiqot oʻzbek va ingliz urush adabiyotlaridagi harbiy
personajlarni taqqoslab, urush hikoyalaridagi tematik va
lingvistik farqlarga eʼtibor qaratadi. “Daryo ortidagi yig‘i”
(Q. Norqobil), “Bu yerdan abadiyatga” (J. Jons), “Ingichka qizil
chiziq” (J. Jons) va “O‘zbechka” (B. Abdug‘afur) asarlarini tahlil
qilish orqali tadqiqot madaniy va tarixiy kontekstlarning
askarlar, tinch aholi, ayollar va bolalar tasvirini qanday
shakllantirishini o‘rganadi. Topilmalar shuni ko‘rsatadiki, har bir
an’anadagi alohida lingvistik va diskursiv tuzilmalar urush va
uning oqibatlariga nisbatan kengroq madaniy istiqbollarni aks
ettiradi.
1
Independent Researcher, Uzbekistan State World Languages University Head, Roman-German Languages
Department, Uzbekistan Partnership for Peace Center. E-mail: malikasoatova111@gmail.com
Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika – Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика – Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue – 3 № 1 (2025) / ISSN 2181-3701
60
Сравнительный анализ военных образов в узбекских и
английских литературных произведениях
АННОТАЦИЯ
Ключевые слова:
военная литература,
лексический выбор,
повествовательная
перспектива,
военная литература,
героизм,
военные повествования.
В этом исследовании сравниваются военные персонажи
в узбекской и английской военной литературе, с упором
на тематические и языковые различия в военных
повествованиях. С помощью анализа «Cry Behind the River»
(Q. Norqobil), «From Here to Eternity» (J. Jones), «The Thin Red
Line» (J. Jones) и «Uzbechka» (B. Abdug‘afur) исследование
изучает, как культурные и исторические контексты
формируют представления о солдатах, гражданских лицах,
женщинах и детях. Результаты показывают, что различные
языковые и дискурсивные структуры в каждой традиции
отражают более широкие культурные перспективы войны
и ее последствий.
Traditionally, war literature was written by veterans and a few male civilians who
wrote such literature to celebrate heroism, to overcome the trauma of their wartime
experiences, and to justify war. Significant examples of war literature by ex-combatants
and victims or survivors are furthermore written to overcome trauma and to reintegrate
soldiers and survivors through artistic expression. War literature is thus a way by which
people affected by wars try to “work through” the trauma of war and get healing from post-
traumatic stress disorders since a vast majority of people who experience war whether as
combatants or as victim-survivors are traumatized and find writing a way to overcome
their trauma. Other literary works were composed to justify and glamourize the various
wars they fictionalize, and to encourage participation in the war. As such, the single
message that stories for boys produced at the beginning of the twentieth century and
which was understood in the same way by all readers was that “war was an opportunity
for adventure, comradeship, duty and service” [1]. Likewise, in America, during the First
World War, writers expressed opinions about it with the majority of them passionately
supporting U.S. intervention on the side of the Allies. Thus, while “opposition to the war
did find literary expression, especially during the period of American neutrality, the
overwhelming majority of wartime writing supported direct American involvement” [2].
This shows that war literature is also a means to declare war as inevitable and to gather
support for wars and the war system as they suggest war as smarter, swifter, and nobler
than other means to resolve conflict. Thus, writers use war literature to create a situation
in which they can share their feelings, and persuade readers to appreciate and perhaps
agree with them.
However, there are other war literature that are less concerned with the military
implications of wars but rather concerned with presenting their authors’ anti-heroic
individual experiences of the war. This includes literature that grapples with the effects of
conflicts on participants and victims/survivors, and a reflection of the views of society on
wars in general. This type of literature is multifaceted, offering multiple points of view,
including the view of the soldiers at the battlefront, the view of witnesses and civilians, as
well as the different views of men and women who carry out various duties in war.
Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika – Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика – Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue – 3 № 1 (2025) / ISSN 2181-3701
61
More importantly, war literature records the effects of wars on society and individuals.
It records how wars destroy the social, cultural, and economic institutions of most
countries that have experienced them. The destruction is on such a scale that no one is left
untouched and writers of war literature portray these effects through their writing. As can
be seen from the discussions above, there are several reasons why writers write about
wars. This is seen in the way literature and war have had a strong relationship over the
years. In most cases, the rise of wars leads to a rise in literary works about war [5]. Though
many politicians and political scientists, historians, economists, journalists, opinion
makers, and poll takers may not form their conclusions based on literary works but rather
according to some ‘objective’ criteria, literature’s role in chronicling wars worldwide
cannot be overemphasized. The advantages of chronicling wars through literature are
outlined and discussed below.
Analyzing works such as “Cry Behind The River” by Q. Norqobil [7], "From Here to
Eternity" by J. Jones [10], "The Thin Red Line" by J. Jones [11], "War and Remembrance" by
H. Wouk [12], one can assume that war has usually been viewed as a man’s business and
as the people at the war front, they experience at first hand, the effects of war. The effects
of war include death, physical deformity, and, after the war, the difficulties of living a
normal non-military life, all of which are represented in literature. One significant effect of
war on men represented in literature is the inability of the ex-soldiers to live normal
violence-free lives after their experience as soldiers. Apart from crime, death is also a way
of achieving masculinity in times of war since death occurring on the battlefield has always
been particularly “glorified and given a great position of honor in society” [3]. Traditional
accounts of war by soldiers and male civilians have mostly portrayed women as unscathed
and untouched by war. Novels that represent the suffering of women and children are
mostly written by women who seek to highlight the effects of wars on women and
emphasize healing for war-affected women. For instance, Gertrude Stein’s major concerns
in her novel, Mrs. Reynolds, her fictionalized experience of World War II, revolved around
domestic needs like foraging for food, rather than securing shelter from aerial
bombardments, though Stein was familiar with bomb shelters. Moreover, It is said that
when the reader reads Baxtiyor Abdug‘afur's work
"Uzbechka", he or she is
initially led
to believe that Jamila Qodirova is the protagonist, and one might think that it is yet another
story about heroism [6]. However, as the events unfold, the course of the narrative
drastically changes, and Jamila transforms from a hero into a prisoner, sentenced to a labor
camp. In
"Uzbechka"
, the division of the nation on the eve of World War II and its tragic
consequences are depicted.
Literary representations of children in war tend to depict them mostly as innocent
victims who are traumatized [4]. Even those texts that feature children who have
ostensibly absorbed violent and destructive ideologies, for example, Nazi indoctrination,
continue to insist on the Romantic myth of childhood as the embodiment of a prelapsarian
past with a redemptive potential for the future. Literature represents children in war
situations in three stages: their lives during the war, their lives as refugees, and their lives
as settlers in different countries. The protagonists of “Bloody Cradle” [8] and “The Sun Will
Not Darken” [9] are children and women who suffer various atrocities attendant upon war
and the different ways through which they manage their personal and social difficulties in
these environments. The representations of children in international literature, together
with literary representations of children in war, indicate that recent literature is never able
Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika – Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика – Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue – 3 № 1 (2025) / ISSN 2181-3701
62
to glorify war the same way that traditional war literature featuring men does. Boys may
simulate being men but this masculine behavior is always radically undercut by the
narrative.
In conclusion, this article presented a survey of literature written in response to
wars throughout the world and has argued that these plays, poems, memoirs, and novels
are written to celebrate combatants as heroes. Other works of literature are written to
overcome trauma while still others are written to bring out the effects of war and to speak
against wars. The effectiveness of studying war through literature has also been outlined.
The article has also made it clear that even though there are common effects of war on
men, women, and children, there are some effects of war that are peculiar to men and
unique to women. But these adult experiences may be distinguished from the experiences
of children, most strongly when children are combatants. In Uzbek literature, the fate of
war victims and their families is often the central theme. In Uzbek war novels, the
devastation of women’s lives caused by war is vividly depicted. In contrast, in English
literature, the focus is more on military life, military strategies, internal conflicts among
soldiers, and the discipline within the army. While Uzbek works describe the national
liberation movements in the Turkestan region, this theme is not present in English
literature.
REFERENCES:
1.
Reynolds, K. (2013). “A Prostitution Alike of Matter and Spirit”: Anti-War
Discourses in Children’s Literature and Childhood Culture Before and During World War I.
Children's Literature in Education, 44(2), 120-139.
2.
Dayton, T. (2016). “Sammy's Right There, Shoulder Deep in the Mess!” American
Literature & the First World War. Against the Current, 31(2), 30.
3.
Bogdanska, O. (2016). Terrible Beauty: Aesthetics of Death in Polish and Japanese
War Literature.
4.
Pearn, J. (2003) "Children and war" Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 39 (3),
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Nurmuhammadov, B.Urush va adabiyot: Nazariy tahlil. Samarqand: SamDU
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B.Abdug‘afur. «Uzbechka». Yangi asr avlodi. 2019. 288 p
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Q. Norqobil. "Daryo ortidagi yig‘i". G’afur G’ulom. 2021. 388 p.
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J. Jones. From here to eternity. Open Road Media. 2011. 865 p.
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J. Jones. The thin red line. Open Road Media. 2011. 546 p.
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