A Comparative Analysis of the Representation of War in the Novel Mother Earth and the Film The Pianist

Abstract

This study presents a comparative analysis of the representations of the Second World War in Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel Mother Earth (Toprak Ana) and Roman Polanski’s film The Pianist. The main objective is to demonstrate that war is not portrayed merely as a military or political phenomenon, but as a comprehensive historical rupture that reshapes everyday life, individual psychology, social relations, and moral frameworks. Despite differences in genre, geography, and narrative technique, both works reveal structurally similar patterns in their depiction of wartime experience. The analysis first shows that both narratives establish a distinct pre-war “norm of peace.” In Mother Earth, this norm is constructed through agrarian labor, communal solidarity, and family life in a rural Soviet village, whereas The Pianist depicts it through urban cultural practices, music, and intellectual life in pre-war Warsaw. The outbreak of war functions as a historical threshold that abruptly interrupts these forms of normality and produces irreversible transformations. The study then examines hunger and deprivation as central manifestations of wartime brutality, interpreting them through Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory, which conceptualizes trauma as a delayed and repetitive experience rooted in survival rather than direct confrontation with death. The phenomenon of “meaningless optimism” is analyzed as a psychological strategy that temporarily suspends awareness of impending catastrophe. Furthermore, Primo Levi’s concept of the “grey zone” and Hannah Arendt’s reflections on normalization and individual moral responsibility are employed to explore the ethical ambiguities generated by extreme conditions.