THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF PLOT AND CHARACTERS IN SHUKUR KHOLMIRZAYEV'S PROSE

SCIENCE AND INNOVATION INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL VOLUME 4 ISSUE 9 SEPTEMBER 2025 ISSN: 2181-3337 | SCIENTISTS.UZ 38 THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF PLOT AND CHARACTERS IN SHUKUR KHOLMIRZAYEV’S PROSE M.O. Khamidova Candidate of Philological Sciences, Professor Namangan State University https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17290812 Abstract. The prose works of Shukur Kholmirzayev, one of the outstanding figures of Uzbek literature, focus primarily on the mastery of character creation, the logical construction of plots, and the depth of artistic thought. Using examples from the writer's short stories and novellas, this article reveals the characters' personalities, the harmony of moving plotlines, and the spiritual and aesthetic ideas conveyed through artistic means. Keywords: plot figures, Uzbek prose, artistic harmony, character creation, plot construction, artistic thought, prose analysis, literary images. Introduction It is well-established in the literature that the prose of the 1970s and 1980s occupies a special place in the development of Uzbek literature. During this period, new literary trends emerged based on the artistic analysis of the human psyche, inner experiences, and real life. One of the leaders of this literary process is Shukur Kholmirzayev, who left an indelible mark on our literature thanks to his profound philosophical content, truthful interpretation of life events, and system of images. In Shukur Kholmirzayev's prose, the role of plot in artistic integrity, as well as the naturalness and authenticity of his characters, are of great importance. The writer skillfully utilized complex plotlines and psychological analysis to reveal human character in his short stories and novellas. In particular, the characters' mental states and their social and moral status play a central role in the development of the plot. This article analyzes the artistic harmony of plot and character in Shukur Kholmirzayev's prose, their complementary role, as well as the writer's artistic thinking and stylistic characteristics. The relevance of this study lies in the fact that the practice of developing plot through imagery in modern Uzbek prose remains understudied, and Shukur Kholmirzayev's work offers a rich source of scholarly material in this regard. Shukur Kholmirzayev's work marks a significant period in the artistic maturity of Uzbek prose. His stories and novellas demonstrate vitality, a profound analysis of the human spiritual world, a natural flow of plot, and artistic perfection of the characters' inner worlds. The writer describes events in a simple yet expressive style, paying particular attention to the development of the plot through the characters' psyches. In many of his works, the plot is formed not by the sequence of events, but by the human psyche and their life choices. The plot is embodied not in the external movement of events, but in the characters' inner experiences. Therefore, although the writer's characters are ordinary people, their inner world is imbued with broad philosophical meaning. It can be said that new heroes began to emerge in Uzbek storytelling in the 1960s XX century. The emergence of new heroes in storytelling, in turn, requires new means of expression and a unique style. Moreover, creating a new hero image in storytelling requires extensive research SCIENCE AND INNOVATION INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL VOLUME 4 ISSUE 9 SEPTEMBER 2025 ISSN: 2181-3337 | SCIENTISTS.UZ 39 in the field of art—language, style, plot, composition, conflict, and other similar means. If a writer attempts to describe subtle, complex situations in a person's life, important character traits, and their spiritual world, but fails to find new means of expression, they cannot fully express their ideological concept. The principle of revealing the hero's image in a story through new artistic devices has come to be regarded as a unique style in the work of Shukur Kholmirzayev, who entered Uzbek literature in the 1960s. This principle was already evident in his first stories, included in the collection "Under Distant Stars" (1968). From his very first stories, the writer introduced the image of a hero with a place in life, a specific social status, and a unique character. His heroes are rural residents who grew up surrounded by beautiful nature, people who grew up in the village, studied in the city, and remained here to work in various positions. Thus, the character of the village, the man who grew up in it, this man’s departure from nature to the city and his desire to return to the village, to nature, to the friends with whom he grew up, provide the originality of the writer’s work. The depiction of life and humanity in Shukur Kholmirzayev's stories forms the core of their plots. It is noteworthy that the depiction technique, emphasized in the writer's early stories and used repeatedly throughout his work, has been elevated to the level of elements constituting his unique narrative style. The closeness of the plot threads in his stories should not lead one to believe that he describes only the fates of the same characters and writes about events of identical content. Indeed, although the characters depicted in his stories revolve around a single theme, their relationships with society and the people around them, their thoughts and experiences, and their spiritual worlds are so diverse that they do not repeat one another, testifying to the extraordinary depth of the writer's artistic talent and the principle of the poetic sense of the word. What new type of hero did Shukur Kholmirzayev introduce to Uzbek storytelling in the 1960s? In our opinion, the hero in his stories manifests itself, above all, in vivid manifestations of his spiritual and intellectual potential. By revealing the inner world and emotional experiences, intellect, and spirituality of his characters as a whole, Shukur Kholmirzayev managed to create a generalized image of the types of life existing in our society and among our people. It is widely recognized that one of Shukur Kholmirzayev's early stories is "Longing." This work creates the image of two close friends, Azim and Ismat, who grew up together in a village. Their social statuses are also different: Azim is the son of a school principal, and Ismat was born and raised in the family of a school custodian. They attend school together. But, as the writer says, fate has decreed strangely: Azim becomes a renowned leader and remains in the city. Ismat is a simple servant and lives in the village. It is a well-established fact that in shaping the character's spiritual world is his position in public life and the way people treat him. The depiction of such life scenes in the story is elevated to the level of artistic truth. The writer reveals this artistic truth by describing the characters' relationships, their spiritual experiences, and their ability to understand and feel friendship. When Azim was in school, he would come to Ismat's home and invite him hunting. Now he's studying in the city and has been promoted to a management position. So will he return to Ismat when he returns to the village? The answer to this question sheds light on Azim's spiritual world. Unfortunately, the childhood relationship between the story's characters never remains the same. This is evident in Azim's spiritual world. Now, when Azim arrives in the village, he goes to Azim's house to look for Ismat, not to Ismat. Of course, Ismat expects no benefit from his official friend. Therefore, the purity of Ismat's spiritual world is clearly evident in this. He is drawn by the love of friendship, he longs for his dear friend from his youth, and he invites him hunting. Azim SCIENCE AND INNOVATION INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL VOLUME 4 ISSUE 9 SEPTEMBER 2025 ISSN: 2181-3337 | SCIENTISTS.UZ 40 does not refuse, they go to the mountains together, and thanks to Azim's behavior, the love between the two friends in the story seems unchanged. However, Azim's arrogance and haughty laughter indicate a falsehood in his spiritual world and in his attitude toward his friend. The writer vividly depicts the falseness manifested in Azim's character. First, he begins to enjoy respect. He also goes hunting at Ismat's invitation. Second, he can't shoot a partridge as skillfully as he did as a child. He can't even climb a high mountain. The distribution of game has also changed. Now only Ismat hunts, but the game belongs only to Azim. Azim's characteristic arrogance consists of trying to deceive his friend like a child, while Ismat hands him the game, and Azim praises him, reminding him that he is still agile. The naive Ismat sincerely understands these compliments and reaches for the sky. In "Longing," the arrogance, haughtiness, and falseness in Azim's relationship with his friend, developing within his spiritual world, are revealed through compelling scenes and details. The writer uses April as a detail. It has become a tradition for Azim to come to the village every April and hunt with Ismat. Ismat looks forward to April each year with particular anticipation. But the following April, Azim doesn't go to the village. He goes to Issyk-Kul to spend the holidays with his wife and children. By describing this event in Azim's life, the writer shows how his character and lifestyle change, how love and longing for his brothers, parents, and nature give way to a longing for his own comfort and pleasure. The uniqueness of Shukur Kholmirzayev's style in the story "Longing" lies in the fact that, to depict his hero's spiritual world, the writer first recognizes in his mind the circumstances that created this world, and then expresses it through artistic imagery. By describing Azim as a naturally heartless and impressionable youth, the writer recognizes the character's personality. Here, it is appropriate to cite the following thought on style: "True style is always internal, but here we distinguish: 1) the style of perception and 2) the style of expression. The style of perception is manifested in how the author finds, processes, and enriches this material, and the style of expression is manifested in how the author clothes his inner world in images and forms" [6, 80]. First of all, the perception of the hero's fate, his spiritual world, and the use of corresponding artistic means of expression are also characteristic of Shukur Kholmirzayev's story "Yosuman," written in the 1970s. Firstly, it should be noted that the story is based on the specific creative concept of the writer, aimed at showing the image of a rural person, his spiritual world, the relationships of villagers with loved ones in the city. It is worth noting that, when speaking about the author's style, we are talking about the entire spectrum of artistic means. That is, "style is determined by all the elements of the structure of a work of art - the ideological direction of the work, the theme, the imagery system, the plot-composition, the language, the visual means, the genre and method, the dialectical unity of the author's unique personality" [5, 207]. Therefore, style largely depends on the writer's skill in choosing a theme, on the ability to reveal the specific destinies of his characters, their attitude to life. The story "Yosuman" begins with the following image: "In the eyes of the artist Koziboy, all people in the world are kind, pure and sincere, but among them there are also scoundrels who do evil: they sow discord between people, break off relationships, gossip and themselves rejoice in these actions" [8, 63]. The character of Koziboy is somewhat similar to Azim in "Soginche." Koziboy was also born in the village, grew up breathing in the beautiful nature of his uncle's village, studied in the SCIENCE AND INNOVATION INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL VOLUME 4 ISSUE 9 SEPTEMBER 2025 ISSN: 2181-3337 | SCIENTISTS.UZ 41 city, and lived here. However, he is not a renowned leader like Azim, but an ordinary artist. He also enjoys socializing with his village friends and longs to be close to his childhood friends. While in "Soginche," city friends are welcome in the village, in "Yosuman," village friends come to the city, to their friends' homes, to visit. It can therefore be inferred that a certain facet of the writer's style is reflected in the description of "Yosuman's" life. Because Shukur Kholmirzayev, perceiving an event in life, finds in it a certain point of change in people's actions. The writer's famous short story "Tolkynlar" ("Bukritol") is a striking example in this regard. At the center of the story is the character of his sister Oina. She is a woman with rich life experience, having lived through much. From the beginning to the end of the work, the writer emphasizes two characteristics of Oina's sister. One is a leader devoted to the people's cause and, therefore, firmly standing by her principles, while the other is a person with a heart as broad as a river, noble. In the story, these two characteristics are intertwined. Nobility, that is, humanism, adorns her principles, which glorifies humanistic views. The writer succeeded in showing how these two qualities of Sister Oina merge in one person. Thanks to these qualities, Sister Oina trusts Mamurjan. Thanks to these qualities, he is able to acutely combat Mamurjan's shortcomings" [11]. The heroes of Shukur Kholmirzayev's prose stories possess a unique vitality and artistic excellence. Most of them are those who have chosen solitude, who are alienated from society, who are searching for their own truth. All of them give the impression of people living not within the confines of the plot, but outside of it. This testifies to the profound insight of the characters in the writer's stories "Tabassum" and "Uzbek Character" into life and the human psyche. In Shukur Kholmirzayev's prose, the plot's dynamics are often shaped by internal dynamics—the characters' thoughts, memories, and experiences. External events often serve as background. However, the real reality unfolds within the characters' minds. Therefore, artistic harmony, the interplay of image and plot, and the unity of idea and form are particularly noticeable in the writer's works. In Sh. Kholmirzayev's works, the "author's image" is not visible as an image, it is not realized in the form of the writer's philosophical reflections. In order to study the nature of this "image", it is necessary to pay attention to the writer's attitude to the object of the image, the artistic means used in transforming the reality of life into artistic reality, the compositional and linguistic aspects of his works. Because the "author's image" is characterized as a person acting in the narrative, manifests itself in one form or another, and is reflected in certain lines of the style of the artistic work as the writer's creative individuality. In the first case, it is realistically formed, compared with other creative generalizations in a literary and artistic work, but in most cases it does not participate in the work as a concrete image” [7, 157]. The writer is not interested in the process of character formation, but the hero enters the work as a formed character. He takes a person at a certain time and seeks to show his mentality in relation to nature, or to the problems of the era, or to other people at that crucial moment. Based on this, his stories are mainly single-event. Whether the writer writes about an agronomist who has become discouraged after receiving criticism from a meeting (“Life is Eternal”), describes the situation of a street boy who is being sent to the army (“Juraboshi”), or discusses the future of a “wild” young man who does not fit into the urban environment, in these works the image of the writer does not stand out as a separate “artistic image”, it is not difficult to notice that each event is embedded in the depths of the image. If we pay attention to the language of the works "Although style is such a complex phenomenon, there is one area of creativity where style is immediately apparent. This is the writer's language." The writer's skill, aesthetic principles, ability to perceive SCIENCE AND INNOVATION INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL VOLUME 4 ISSUE 9 SEPTEMBER 2025 ISSN: 2181-3337 | SCIENTISTS.UZ 42 the colors of life, and the ability to feel subtle differences are clearly visible in the language” [10, 283]. His stories, short stories, and novels are distinguished by their dedication to untouched events and their richness in characters. Shukur Kholmirzayev tried to illuminate the psyche of a child in more than ten stories. Although this image is reflected in many stories, it was embodied in a gallery of characters that do not repeat each other. As the owner of a unique artistic style, Shukur Kholmirzayev avoids imitation, one-sidedness, and narrative, and although he is stingy with words, he manages to convey his thoughts to the reader fully and vividly. However, sometimes his works give the impression that they are unfinished. The reader expects the continuation of the work. He does not draw portraits of heroes, it seems that he focuses on creating characters, which makes the reader think, deeply makes you think. The verdict passed on the heroes of the work is brought to the attention of the reader. No matter what work he reads, every reader wants the fate of the heroes of the work to be as he wants. The writer's story "Santa Claus is Coming" expresses the spirit of the child. Even as a child, he is depicted as a very simple, trusting, pure-hearted character who imagines his dreams as he wants and believes in them himself. In the writer's story "Spring", the story of a person living in mountainous regions, a person whose first love is budding in his heart, and this very spring season when trees wake up and put out leaves, gives the story even more charm. The story "Juraboshi" [9, 115] is a true story taken from the life of a group of children of different ages who consider themselves the "masters" of the street. The leader of the "masters of the street" is a boy named Habibulla, who describes the life of children through the changes in their psyche on the eve of leaving for military service, saying goodbye to their "workers", assigning them tasks. It is expressed as childhood, adolescence, adolescence and farewell to them. Conclusion It is generally acknowledged that in Shukur Kholmirzayev's prose, the harmony of plot and characters is an important factor that demonstrates the writer's artistic skill. In his works, the plot develops based on the inner experiences and mental changes of the characters, which gives the prose a deep philosophical content, vitality and aesthetic value. Each character created by the writer is depicted as an independent thinker, a person with a rich inner world, and through them the ideological and spiritual direction of the work is expressed at a high artistic level. REFERENCES 1. Hamidova M. O/ Shukur Kholmirzayeva creative exposes person and society’s illnesses // International Scientific Journal science and innovation, Series C, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2024.- P.109 - 113. 2. Hamidova M.O.Writing skills and artistic tools. “Science and innovation” International scientific journal. Volume 2. 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