Verbalization of the concept “way” in V.O. Pelevin`s novel “Yellow arrow”

Statement of the problem. The conceptual world picture of an author of a text is a key element to his/her understanding and correct interpretation. It helps to make conclusions about the author’s individual understanding of the world. The concept “way” is one of the basic concepts both in the Russian language and in the individual author’s pictures of the world, and is put on a par with such universal concepts as life, death, God, etc. The purpose of the article is to study the semantic content of the concept “way” in V.O. Pelevin’s novel “Yellow Arrow” and the ways of its lexical representation, identifying the features of the individual author’s picture of the world. Methodology (materials and methods). Research material consists of contexts verbalizing the concept “way”, extracted by continuous sampling from the text of the story “Yellow Arrow” by V.O. Pelevin. Basic analysis methods include descriptive and conceptual analysis, contextual and component analysis of lexical units, semantic analysis of dictionary definitions. Research results. In the aspect of verbal contextual representations, the concept “way” denotes a direction, a vector of development of human life in the novel: the common human route moves to the “destroyed bridge”. This idea is embodied in the lexemes of the near periphery (passengers, arrow) and the far periphery (knocking of wheels, low-style proper nouns). Not everyone can find an individual path, but the main character was able to “get off the train”.