“The end of the world is always local”: spatial motifs of the concept of FREEDOM in Paul Lynch’s novel “Prophet Song”

<jats:p>The study aims to identify how the system of spatial motifs in Paul Lynch’s novel “Prophet Song” transforms the perception of freedom within the work’s dystopian world. The study is grounded in Orlando Patterson’s anthropological typology (personal, sovereign, civic liberties) and Quentin Skinner’s neo-Roman theory (freedom as independence from the will of another). The scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that, for the first time, using a contemporary dystopian novel as its material, it describes the system of spatial motifs that objectify the artistic concept of FREEDOM and offers its interpretation within the neo-Roman framework. The results indicate that the system of motifs is organized around three loci: the house (motifs of intrusion and desacralization), the city (motifs of alienation, double exposure, and the labyrinth), and the border (motifs of arbitrary power and desubjectification). Each locus exhibits a consistent deformation of the artistic concept of freedom, and the dynamics of the motif system follow the logic of the expansion of the space of unfreedom. The “residual meaning” of freedom in the novel’s finale consists not in the restoration of freedom as a status, but in its drastically reduced form – the choice of life at any cost.</jats:p>