Maddening Loneliness of “The Man in White Coat” and “Like Life”

Maddening Loneliness of “The Man in White Coat” and “Like Life”

Sagiroglu, Rana

Oğuz Atay, regarded as one of the first surrealist authors of Turkish literature, is the pioneer creator of modernist novels of Turkey. He brings a marginal point of view and style in 1970’s, he started to write his works under the light of unusual fiction-style features. In his short story collection “Korkuyu Beklerken”, the most impressive short story “Beyaz Mantolu Adam” (The Man in White Coat) is the one to settle the reader’s mind for the first reading. He is so prosperous and effective about what he wants to deliver to the reader that the main character becomes the focus point although he never utters even a sentence throughout the story. Oğuz Atay consciously creates his main character in this way because his main aim is to reveal the loneliness of modern man in this crowded and noisy world. He highlights chief themes such as: displacement, uncertainty, skepticism, incongruity, independence and more. Lorrie Moore, a still-living and best-loved author of her generation, collected her short stories in 2008, and one of the most fabulous short stories “Like Life” forces the reader to think on ordinary lives of ordinary people. Her characters in the short story are the ones who seem to have organized and regular lives, but when analyzed in detail, their being incomplete, deficient and unfulfilled are discovered. The characters carry anxiety and doubts inside their souls, and that causes them to be isolated and unhappy. Moore emerges to awaken the reader to point out what they are that makes them unhappy and strange. Limited third person point of view as her stylistic choice contributes to the text and the reader to evoke characters’ inner lives. The main themes used in the story are loneliness, never quite belonging, absenteeism, mode of undefined, and so on. The aim of this study to compare these widely used themes such as loneliness, isolation, alienation, incongruity in two different short stories by different writers as well as different cultures. The authors’ sex difference also will enrich and contribute to the analysis of these literary works.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012

960