Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 5 – TWO SHIRTS OF FLAME 
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from Stamboul resembled very much that of Ayesha”
22
. It is only by interpreting the 
characters as symbols that sense can be made of the closing lines of the novel
23
: 
Two doctors talked as they descended the hill of the Djebedjé hospital. 
One said:
“I have looked up the names in Lieutenant Peyami Effendi’s memoirs.” 
“Who were they?” 
“There was no sister called Ayesha in the … army corps and no 
commander in that regiment called Ihsan.” 
“Has he no relatives?”
“He has a cousin who was killed in the war, called Djemal, who has a 
sister somewhere but no one knows her address or her name.” 
“Then?” 
“It must be the effect on his mind of the bullet.” 
And then the two doctors held a long and scientific discussion over 
Peyami, who had died during the operation, and they gave a difficult 
name to his Shirt of Flame.
This abrupt ending has puzzled most readers. Jale Parla considers that neither the 
shirt of patriotism nor that of passion rewards the heroes with any sense of fulfilment 
and concludes
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:
Ayşe as a symbol of Anatolia represents something that does not exist. 
Just as the idea of the motherland is an illusion that the patriot has 
invented (the dying Peyami) so is Ayşe the representative of that illusion 
in her inaccessible perfection. Kezban is the reality of Anatolia. And the 
patriot is all too ready to turn his back on that reality. Since this is quite 
a risky message to give, Halide Edip ends her novel in a way that baffles 
many of her readers: she erases the whole story and makes it into 
hallucination of Peyami who is lying in the hospital with bullets in his 
head and who in the end dies on the operation table.
22
Adıvar 1924, 81 footnote 2 
23
Adıvar 1924, 267 
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Parla, Jale 2007, 15 

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