“The Red Haired Woman” and “Trans-Atlantic” within the Father, Son, and Authority Triangle

Abstract

The father and son relationship is the most important, and probably the most difficult one. Generally, fathers want to realize their desires which they were not able to through their sons, and in one sense see them as their special projects. However, when they come to a certain age, the sons mostly choose a way of living in which they can realize their own dreams by resisting their father's desires. As a result of this, conflicts, inevitably, arise between them. S. Freud shows “Oedipus complex” as the only reason for the conflicts. S. Freud, mentions them in his book entitled “Totem and Taboo”, and asserts that these conflicts develop through subconscious drives. It is obvious that the oedipal conflict between the father and son, which has been ongoing since the beginning of the mankind, is one of the most dominant patterns in literature. This interdisciplinary study addresses the “killing father and son” archetype that is found in two Turkish and Polish worldfamous writers' novels (“The Red Haired Woman” by Orhan Pamuk and “Trans-Atlantic” by Witold Gombrowicz). In this study, “the desire to kill” is discussed through Erich Fromm's approach to Oedipus complex, that is to say, regarding the conflict as a symbol of revolt of the son against his father's authority in a patriarchal society. With the aim of comparing the organizational structure that rests on male authority in Polish and Turkish societies, in this study the similarities in this sense, will be shown and verified in the scale of these two novels which constitute a challenge against the societies which do not dignify their sons.

Keywords

• Ataerkil Toplum
• Ödipus Kompleksi
• Baba Cinayeti
• Oğul Cinayeti
• Arketip