ANIMAL CHARACTERS IN THE WORKS OF JACK LONDON AND NORMUROD NORQOBILOV: A COMPARATIVE LITERARY ANALYSIS
Keywords:
Jack London, Normurod Norqobilov, animal character, animal agency, nature, adaptation, loyalty, human–animal relationship, comparative literature.Abstract
This article offers a comparative analysis of animal characters in selected works by Jack London and Normurod Norqobilov. The study focuses on London’s The Call of the Wild and White Fang and on Norqobilov’s Paxmoq, Changalzor iti, and Ovul oralagan bo‘ri. Rather than treating animals as decorative elements of landscape or as simple allegories of human behaviour, the article examines how they acquire narrative agency, respond to environmental pressure, and reveal the ethical quality of human actions. The comparison shows that both writers construct animals as developing literary subjects whose behaviour changes under the influence of experience and surroundings. At the same time, their artistic emphases are different. London foregrounds adaptation, instinct, hierarchy, freedom, and the tension between wilderness and civilisation, whereas Norqobilov gives particular weight to attachment, vulnerability, loyalty, loss, and moral responsibility toward living beings. The article argues that this difference is not a simple opposition between two national traditions; rather, it reflects two distinct ways of using animal experience to explore human conduct and the place of the non-human world in literature.
References
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