The thesis analyses the image of war and the individual in the face of war both in a more tangible sense (the war in which the individual is involved) and in a metaphorical sense (the war transposed into the individual's psyche) in the prose of Vitomil Zupan. In both cases, the question of war in Zupan's writing has proved to be strongly related to the broader question of the relationship between society or its institution and the individual. The war itself is thus only one of many possible settings in which this relationship is reflected. The institution uses similar tools to control and manage the individual in times of war as well as peace. With these tools the individual is shaped by the institution and forced into ever greater personal struggles and destructiveness. Many of Zupan's protagonists do not and cannot find internal peace and are consequently destroyed. It is precisely by the protagonist's downfall as an individual, however, that Zupan gives the reader a clearer insight into the war within that individual and into the workings of the institution/society that ignited it.
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