The Story of Liberation from Fear in Oksana Zabuzhko’s Fiction

In the fiction by Oksana Zabuzhko, one of the most well-known contemporary Ukrainian writers, trauma manifests itself through characters’ state of fear that hinders both their individual self-actualization, decolonization of Ukraine and gaining the political agency by Ukrainian people. Approaching Zabuzhko’s fiction as an author’s hypertext we can trace the unfolding of the cross-cutting plot of the protagonists’ fight with the totalitarian system that uses fear to paralyze them. The development of this plot reflects gradual changes in Ukrainians’ mindset since the 1980s until now, from representation of fear as permanent society’s state (in the short story 'Sister, Sister') to observation that the post-Maidan generation does not experience this fear anymore (in the story 'No Entry to the Performance Hall after the Third Bell'). The aim of this article is to analyze the forms of artistic representation of Oksana Zabuzhko’s plot of liberation from the totalitarian fear in different periods of her creative life.