Bullying as a social phenomenon and its depiction in the modern English literature

Abstract

The paper regards bullying as a complex socially conditioned psychological phenomenon and examines how this problem is reflected in contemporary English literature. The article aims to explore the issue of bullying as it is presented in contemporary English literature. The research methodology is based on the combination of comparative, cultural, psychoanalytic, and partially narrative methods. The research highlights the state of study of the problem of bullying in contemporary psychology and sociology, defines the features and components of this phenomenon, and its causes. It reveals the degree of relevance of the problem of bullying in the modern UK, its legal and legislative aspects and refers to statistics on the relevance of this problem in the country. The problem of bullying and the nature of its reflection in classical English literature, analyzed in the paper, prompt the conclusion that an image of a defenseless victim of harassment and humiliation appeared in English literature long before the term ‘bullying’ and was directly related to the genre of the novel of education. This problem is central in the works of Ch. Dickens, E. Bronte, etc. W. Golding introduces this theme in his novel “Lord of the Flies”, a parody of R. Ballantyne’s “Coral Island”, taking a metaphorical approach. The paper analyzes how the problem of bullying is revealed in contemporary English literature on the basis of N. Hornby’s novels “My Boy” and D. Mitchell’s “Under the Sign of the Black Swan”. The authors examine the images of the main characters of the novels – teenagers who become victims of bullying, their psychological state, reaction to the situation of humiliation and harassment. Thus, D. Mitchell depicts systemic bullying in his autobiographical novel showing the school dominated by a rigid hierarchy of teenagers that dictates the norms of behavior, nature of relationships and subordination. This hierarchy leads to the fact that the highest positions in this system are occupied by physically strong but intellectually limited students. They are aggressive and are used to resolving conflicts by force. The paper examines the writers’ concepts of the way out of the victim’s difficult psychological situation in each novel. The impunity of offenders is seen as mostly based on the victim’s submission, which, in turn, is caused by adolescents’ misconceptions of honor and betrayal. The novelists speculate on how to break the stereotypes of adolescent psychology and get free from the power of the offenders. Their ideas are analyzed in the paper.