Out of Tune with the World: Thrownness and Everyday Life in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight and Tezer Özlü’s Zaman Dışı Yaşam

Year 2026, Issue: 10 , 19 - 44 , 22.04.2026

Evren Akaltun Akan

https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1933905

https://izlik.org/JA49MC58WD

Abstract

This article provides a comparative reading of Tezer Özlü's Zaman Dışı Yaşam and Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight in light of Martin Heidegger's concepts of thrownness, fallenness, authenticity, and tranquility. It illustrates how the protagonists of these novels are “thrown” into a world whose social and temporal rhythm they can neither fully join nor fully escape. Focusing on the protagonists’ strained relationship to everyday life, this article further examines how everydayness appears not as a space of belonging but as a condition marked by drift, withdrawal, and suspension. While Rhys’s protagonist Sasha responds to the conditions of everydayness through strategies of self-effacement and imitation, Özlü’s narrator actively resists absorption, seeking intensity, withdrawal, and literary engagement as forms of coping. Yet neither text offers resolution or recovery. Instead, both protagonists endure their existence through writing, movement, and fleeting human encounters, sustaining life without stability or closure. By reading them together, the article reveals a shared mode of suspended being that negotiates the tension between fallenness, authenticity, and the precarious temporality of everyday life.

Keywords

Thrownness , Jean Rhys , Tezer Özlü , everydayness , authenticity , fallenness

Supporting Institution

This study was conducted without any financial support.

Thanks

In this study, artificial intelligence-supported tools were used to a limited extent within the acceptable boundaries defined in Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies’ Artificial Intelligence Use Policy; all content has been reviewed and approved in its final form by the author(s). Artificial Intelligence was employed only as a tool for translation assistance and grammatical proofreading. All final edits, structural refinements, and factual verifications were performed by me. The core intellectual content and analysis remain my original work.

Dünyayla Uyumsuz: Jean Rhys’in Good Morning, Midnight’ı ile Tezer Özlü’nün Zaman Dışı Yaşam’ında Fırlatılmışlık ve Gündelik Hayat

https://izlik.org/JA49MC58WD

Abstract

Bu makale, Tezer Özlü’nün Zaman Dışı Yaşam’ı ile Jean Rhys’in Good Morning, Midnight’ını, Martin Heidegger’in fırlatılmışlık, düşmüşlük, sahicilik ve sükûnet kavramları ışığında karşılaştırmalı olarak ele alır. Çalışma, bu romanların kahramanlarının, ne bütünüyle katılabildikleri ne de bütünüyle kaçabildikleri toplumsal ve zamansal ritimlere sahip bir dünyaya “fırlatıldıklarını” gösterir. Kahramanların gündelik hayatla kurdukları gerilimli ilişkiye odaklanan makale, gündeliğin bir aidiyet alanı olarak değil, sürüklenme, geri çekilme ve askıda kalma ile belirlenen bir durum olarak göründüğünü ortaya koyar. Rhys’in kahramanı Sasha, gündeliğin koşullarına kendini silikleştirme ve taklit stratejileriyle karşılık verirken, Özlü’nün anlatıcısı bu soğurulmaya aktif biçimde direnerek yoğunluk, geri çekilme ve edebî angajman arayışına yönelir. Ancak her iki metin de bir çözülme ya da iyileşme sunmaz. Aksine, her iki kahraman da yazı, hareket ve geçici insani karşılaşmalar aracılığıyla varoluşlarını sürdürür; böylece istikrar ya da kapanış olmaksızın yaşamı devam ettirirler. Bu iki metni birlikte okuyan makale, düşmüşlük, sahicilik ve gündelik hayatın kırılgan zamansallığı arasındaki gerilimi müzakere eden, askıda kalmış bir varoluş kipini görünür kılar.

Keywords

Fırlatılmışlık , Jean Rhys , Tezer Özlü , gündeliklik , sahicilik , düşmüşlük

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