Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 8 – YABAN, KADRO, ANKARA 
249 
spaced to suggest their remoteness from the life of the village. For example early in 
the novel there is a reference to the first victory at İnönü which is ostensibly 
prompted by the narrator saying without any specific chronological anchor that the 
Istanbul newspapers reached him. But this news is mentioned long before the signing 
of the Treaty of Sèvres which had in reality taken place five months previously. The 
second victory at İnönü, which was in reality separated from the first by only a 
couple of months, appears dozens of pages later and the collapse of the London 
conference, which actually preceded the second victory, comes later still
26
. The 
second victory of March 1921 is mentioned also in association with an event which 
took place in November 1920. This is not surprising as Ahmet Celal tells us that he 
has lost the sense of time and does not know what day of the week he is in
27
.
The deep sense of inadequacy which Yakup Kadri felt personally in 1921 is 
projected dramatically in the novel by the representation of Ahmet Celal as a useless 
cripple. He is in every sense an antihero and in this respect an understanding of the 
novel must explain Yakup Kadri’s obviously deliberate departure from the 
conventions of the Kurtuluş literature. That Ahmet Celal has only one arm is 
repeatedly noticed. Although he dreams of confronting the Greeks and dying at their 
hands, this does not happen
28
; instead he is almost killed by a stray Turkish bullet
29
. 
Both Greek and Nationalist officers who pass through the village think he is almost 
26
Karaosmanoğlu 2006, 39, 96, Jacobson, 109/37, 115, 133 
27
Karaosmanoğlu 2006, 31. Yakup Kadri’s manipulation of time for emotional effect is reminiscent of Tolstoy’s 
in 
Anna Karenina. 
For the latter see Nabokov, 190-194. 
28
Karaosmanoğlu 2006, 123 
29
Karaosmanoğlu 2006, 129 

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