THE THEME OF FEAR IN YASHAR KEMAL’S YAGMURCUK KUSU AND WILLIAM GOLDING’S THE LORD OF THE FLIES

Abstract

It would not be wrong to say that fear is an indispensable and universal theme among novelists as it is one of the leading elements of a person’s life. This may be the reason Yashar Kemal uses this theme frequently in his works, especially in Salman the Solitary which is the first book of his trilogy Little Nobody. Yashar Kemal, in some way, equalizes fear from great to small by using children’s perceptions of fear, and splendidly reveals how it shapes one’s life. The reader witnesses death anxiety, altruistic fear (fear for others you value) or fear for the self, fear of the unknown (person or places) and so forth in this book. Kemal achieves to have the reader experience the story as if in a nightmare, yet it is a reality linked to Kemal’s life. This makes the novel more fearful since it is no longer a fiction, but an autobiography. The same theme with some distinctive perspectives can be seen in William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. In this novel, fear and children are treated as one subject as the reader is transported to a child’s inner world; one which is both similar yet different to an adults. Both writers use the theme of fear to show that it can create illusions and make a person mad and obsessed enough to commit murder. Therefore, in this paper, fear and its role on children will be analyzed, with special emphasis on the murderous characters Salman, Roger, and Jack.