Uzun Sürmüş Bir Günün Akşamı'nda olay örgüsü

Abstract

After his first book Troya’da Ölüm Vardı (1963), Bilge Karasu (1930-1995) published his second book Uzun Sürmüş Bir Günün Akşamı (1970) which won the Sait Faik Story Prize in 1971. The book is composed of two main parts. The first part which has the same title with the book consists of two stories entitled “Ada” and “Tepe”. The second part which is entitled “Dutlar” consists of a story with the same title, namely, “Dutlar”. These stories do not reveal their meanings easily at a first reading since the narrative of thoughts and facts are interwoven in a harmony similar to that of polyphonic music. It is this fact that makes it difficult to grasp the meaning of the stories. This difficulty of understanding increases since the events of the stories are not presented in chronological order. Moreover, they are presented as interrupted narratives. This gives rise to the consideration that Bilge Karasu is a “difficult author”. We have observed that none of the researches carried out since the publication of the book have analysed the plot of the book as a whole. In our thesis, we analysed the stories of the book through focusing on the plot and we aimed to show how the narratives are incorporated into one another and how the causality relations have been established through the organization of the narrative. We examined the stories in terms of time phases which determine the phases of the lives of the characters together with setting, point of view, the characters and their interior struggles, their historical-social background and their exterior struggles. We have also explained that there is an integrity within each story and the work as a whole. Consequently, we have shown that each of the aforementioned components serves to establish the integrity of the stories and despite its complex and interrupted narration, the work is in an integrity focussed on the main theme of the “attitude of an individual under oppression”.