This article reveals the peculiarities of emotional reflection in Akzhan Nurmanov’s novel “The death of Kulan”. The authors study the role and significance of the emotional reflection in the history of kazakh language on the basis of achievements of world literary criticism. The subject of the study is the artistry of the work, where the experience of impressions and emotional reactions of the protagonist comes to the fore. Fundamental in understanding the poetics of the novel is the feeling of experiences. This paper demonstrates that the evaluation of events in the novel occurs through the system of value coordinates of the hero. It allows us to understand the authors’ concept of personality: what it can or should be. The emotional reflection is in the conflict of the work through the consciousness of Kulan to accept the painful suffering and death with the hero. World literary criticism has developed a new approach to the analysis of the art work. This approach helps to reread the novel where the aesthetic attitude to the hero and his feelings comes to the fore. The object of the artistic image is a personality, its inner world and actions with the logic of the development of life.