Abstract
Bodily problems such as physical disorders or defects are the themes one often encounters in world literature. Literature, surely, has the cathartic power to develop empathy through fictional characters with such problems. A particularly rich literary text, in terms of psychological analysis, allows us to understand how bodily problems affect the personalities of individuals as well as their general moods. Herein, Peyami Safa’s Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu (1930), a prominent novel in Turkish literature and W. Somerset Maugham’ın İnsanın Esareti (Of Human Bondage) (1915), a much admired novel in English literature, both address bodily issues and the direct or indirect psycholog-ical sufferings that they cause through revealing the inner lives of their protagonists. The anonymous hero of Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu has increasing difficulty walking due to bone tuberculosis on his knee and worries about amputation. Philip Carey, the protagonist of Of Human Bondage, copes with a club foot which is the result of a birth deformity and, therefore, has a similar difficulty walking. At this point, it is notable that both novels are Bildungsroman, a narrative about the transition years from childhood to adulthood, because thanks to this sub-genre the reader has the opportunity to ob-serve the formation of the aforementioned protagonists’ personality. Such details in these novels help to unveil and unpack the psychological outcomes of bodily problems. This paper intends to scrutinize Peyami Safa’s Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu and W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bon-dage within the frame of comparative literature and make the parallelisms between these Works more visible.