RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

Öz

The stream-of-conscious is a postmodern novel
narrative technique in which one's own feelings and thoughts are conveyed through
the sensibility of the writer directly. The writers who use this technique
express deeply and abstractly how the hero perceives life with the reflection
of consciousness. The most prominent feature of the stream of consciousness
technique is that there is no logical connection between thoughts and that it
does not comply with grammar rules. Thoughts combined with sensory, auditory
and visual connections are instantly expressed. The stream-of-consciousness
technique, which is frequently used in modern literary works, conveys the
heroes' perception of events and the reflections in their spiritual worlds. The
stream-of-consciousness technique began to manifest itself with Existentialism
in the 20th century. The French writer Albert Camus, one of the pioneers of
this movement and the founder of absurd philosophy (la philosophie d’absurde)
specifically conveys the thoughts of his main character Meursault in his work
called The Stranger through the stream-of-consciousness technique as he does in
most of his works. By this technique, which is frequently used in modern
Turkish literature, Yusuf Atılgan expresses the thoughts in the memory of the
main character C. of his work named The Wanderer without constructing
any logical relationships rather than using the reflection of consciousness. By
comparatively approaching to the stream-of consciousness technique in Camus’ The
Stranger and Atılgan’s The Wanderer, our aim in this study is to
identify the impact of the it on the main characters' thoughts on their internal
reckoning and its impact on their conversations. This comparative study focuses
on the question of why and how the main characters perform their actions in a
process. Within the frame of the school of Existentialism, which concentrates
on the human being and his/her philosophy of existence, both writers, in their
works, reveal the alienation of the main characters to the society they live
in, their loneliness and the disintegration of those detached from the society
in an individual-oriented understanding and by means of the
stream-of-consciousness technique.