Shakespeare’in Hamlet, Homer ve Barker’in Achilles’den, Barnes ve Saunders’e: Ölümden Kaçmak, Sonunda Bilinmeyen’e Yenik Düşmek

Year 2021, Volume: 15 Issue: 1, 1 - 16, 29.06.2021

Gillian Alban

https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.959586

Abstract

Bu makale, Achilles’den Shakespeare’in Hamlet’ine, çağdaş yazarlar Julian Barnes ve George Saunders’e kadar ölüm olgusuna yaklaşımları tartışmayı amaçlar. Araştırmanın konusu olan yazarların eserleri, kader ve bilinmeyene gidişi kabullenmeden önce nihai adaleti beklerken bile ölümden kaçınma veya onu kontrol etme arzusunu ortaya koyar. Hamlet’in babasının araftaki hayaline olan ilgisi, daha sonra kendi sorunları arasında unutulur; Achilles erken ve şaşalı bir ölümü kabul etmişken Hades’deki kaybolan yaşantısının yasını tutar. Barker ise onu, ölümü kabullenmesine karşın oğlunun geleceğini planlarken gösterir. Çağdaş Saunders, Lincoln’ın genç oğlunun arafın eşiğinde tutulurken sonsuz kaderi, yargılanma ve sona ulaşma için onun cesaretlendirilmesini konu eder. Barnes’ın arzularını tatmin edecek cennet rüyası, aslında böyle bir cennetin bile nihai olarak kötü olduğunu gösterir, yarattığı karakter bir anlam aramakta ve kendi kişiliğinin tuzağına düşmektedir. İncelenen eserler göstermiştir ki, kaleme alındıkları dönemler farklı da olsa ölümden neye mal olursa olsun kaçınmaya çalışır ama sonuçta onu kabullenir ve mümkünse hayata nihai adaleti getirmesini umarlar.

Keywords

Ölüm, araf, yargılanma, mahşer, çözüm, hiçlik

Thanatos in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Homer and Barker’s Achilles, Barnes and Saunders: Warding off Death before Release into the Unknown

Abstract

This paper offers an existential approach to writers’ responses to death, evaluating their different views regarding our ultimate destiny, Thanatos. It considers the deliberations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the archetypal death-ponderer, and Homer’s Achilles, approaching our own time through contemporaries like Julian Barnes, George Saunders and Pat Barker. These writings spanning hundreds of years demonstrate our desire to evade or control death, while anticipating ultimate judgment for behaviour in this life, before loosening our attachment to life in accepting our final fate. We watch Hamlet’s concern for his father’s ghost tortured in purgatory and his wish for revenge, as it became surpassed by Hamlet’s interrogations concerning his own mortality, still obsessed by death, to which force he finally surrenders. While Achilles had initially embraced a gloriously heroic, youthful death, Homer subsequently shows him mourning the loss of his life in Hades; Pat Barker shows Achilles as reconciled to death, even while attached to life in considering his child’s future. The contemporary George Saunders presents Lincoln’s young son caught in a liminal bardo of the dead, who are trapped in attachment to their mortal state, while Willie is enabled to transition to his final state of possible judgment and closure. Julian Barnes’ wish-fulfilment dream or desire of heaven offers this ideal as a debased, corporeal paradise, leaving his character longing for meaning, even while trapped in the limitations of his own personality. Visions and dreams from Homer and Shakespeare onwards offer cryptic clues regarding unknown future states. These literary reflections through disparate eras indicate the human aspiration to evade death and whatever lies beyond it, while often positing a final surrender to death, alongside a wish for it to make sense of life through karmic resolution.

Keywords

Death, bardo, purgatory, judgment, resolution, nothing

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