INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STRUGGLE IN COOPER’S FICTION AND UZBEK PROSE

Abstract

This article examines the representation of individual and collective struggle in James Fenimore Cooper’s fiction and Uzbek prose from a comparative literary perspective. The study focuses on how personal conflict, moral choice, social responsibility, and communal resistance are artistically embodied in two different literary traditions. The relevance of the topic lies in the growing scholarly interest in the relationship between the individual and society, especially in literary works that reflect historical change, national consciousness, and ethical confrontation. The aim of the article is to identify the main artistic and ideological features of individual and collective struggle in Cooper’s fiction and Uzbek prose, as well as to determine their common and distinctive aspects. The research is based on comparative, contextual, and textual analysis. The results show that in both literary traditions the individual is not represented as isolated from the collective; rather, personal destiny is closely connected with the historical experience, values, and aspirations of the community. In Cooper’s fiction, struggle is often revealed through frontier conflict, moral testing, and the defense of justice, while in Uzbek prose it is more strongly associated with national memory, social endurance, spiritual resistance, and collective identity. The study concludes that both Cooper’s fiction and Uzbek prose interpret struggle as a multidimensional literary phenomenon in which the personal and the communal are inseparably linked. This comparative approach makes it possible to better understand the artistic nature of heroism, resistance, and historical responsibility in different literary and cultural contexts.