Images of "own-alien" in the short story "King Billy is a gentleman" by H. Mantel

The article examines a short story "King Billy is a Gentleman" by one of the key writers of contemporary Britain - Hilary Mantel. The study is devoted to the analysis of the key images of the story and the means of their creation, which are built in a close dichotomy of the own and the alien. The story selected for analysis was included in the collection «Learning to Talk», first published in 2003. The collection includes stories that observe the complex and contradictory childhoods of the main characters in each of them, besides, many of the details in the children's lives are autobiographical. Images of the own and the alien underpin all the stories in the collection, in each short story they are presented in a special way and from a different angle. The "King Billy is a Gentleman" is no exception, it tells the story of the life of an Irish boy living among strangers. The artistic world of the story, like that of the Irish protagonist Liam, is divided into two opposing camps, in which the images of the own are insignificant (the protagonist and his mother) and the aliens (the city, the environment, the neighborhood family) are all-encompassing and aggressive. It should be noted that the image of the Irishman in the story is not clichéd and stereotypical, but individual. The conflict of the story is linked to the self-definition of the main character as an individual, and most importantly, as an Irishman. The conflict is resolved by the end of the story and gives the impression of tragedy and despair, which indicates the oppression of the "own" in Liam's world and the almost final victory of the "alien".