Oppositional concepts LIFE – DEATH in Ray Bradbury’s literary space
Authors:   Sumy Makarenko State Pedagogical University, Davydova Tetiana , Bondarenko Viktor ,   Sumy Makarenko State Pedagogical University, Chengxiang Luo ,   Sumy Makarenko State Pedagogical University
Published: September 2024

The article offers a brief study of the oppositional concepts LIFE and DEATH in Ray Bradbury’s literary space. The choice of the field is explained by the fact that it’s the abstract concepts that represent the greatest difficulty for the conceptual analysis thus challenging the linguists. The referents of such concepts proved to have blurred boundaries, and therefore it is difficult to define them; their axiological features are always subjective in nature. Native speakers operate such concepts subconsciously and explanatory dictionaries record only the most general features of their linguistic verbalizers. In order to expand the understanding of their nature, we conducted a study of the essence of the LIFE – DEATH concepts and their context realization. The research is based on Ray Bradbury’s novel «Fahrenheit 451». The work highlights the specificity of the oppositional concepts LIFE – DEATH semantic content and reveals their main conceptual features. It was detected due to the studied concepts analysis that there exists a certain cause-and-effect relationships scheme between the life-and-death phenomena, which consequently allowed us to single out the integral and differential features of the LIFE – DEATH concepts in Ray Bradbury’s literary space. It was proved that Ray Bradbury’s idiostyle is quite unique in its nature. The author’s worldview is characterized by the complexity and ambiguity of the interpretation. The key LIFE – DEATH concepts are based on one of the main universal dichotomies and are completely interconnected; their formation is based on a subtle mechanism that reflects the dual nature of human thinking. The LIFE – DEATH concepts verbalization in Ray Bradbury’s works is mainly carried out implicitly, in most cases with the help of such stylistic means and devices as metaphor, epithet, simile, which reflect the peculiarities of the writer’s idiostyle. The words and phrases used by the author have hidden meanings, thereby constituting the periphery, or the so-called associative layer of the concepts. It is proved that the periphery of the LIFE – DEATH concepts in the writer’s work reflects the individual author’s interpretation of these two phenomena and is significantly different from the traditional idea of what life-death is. In dictionaries, life and death are mainly interpreted as phenomena that are primarily related to people and other living beings, while in Ray Bradbury’s literary space it has a lot to do with books. It is the books that render the idea of life, it is their burning that metaphorically translates the idea of death. The conducted literary discourse analysis led to the reconstruction of a few basic conceptual metaphors: BOOK is LIFE, and the BURNED BOOKS are DEAD BEINGS / CREATURES which used to be filled with LIFE. In spite of the fact that the concepts of life and death are oppositional, they still exist in an inextricable connection with each other, so the verbalization of one of the concepts necessarily leads to the implicit realization of the other.