The Analyzation Of Elif Şafak’s Novel “Pinhan” From The Point Of Archetypical Symbolism

There is a number of methods that can be applied in order to analyze a literary work, thus revealing its hidden features and providing a deeper insight into its narrative layers. By taking various points of view both the reader and the researcher may achieve a better understanding of the work, seeing it from the different prospectives. Foundation stone of this article on Archetypical Symbolism is the method used for analyzing and explaining symbolic structures of literary works. Archetypics constitute sense, thought and behaviour shape of human beings. Explanation of these shapes discloses the hero’s adventure. It is C.G. Jung that theorized Archetypical Symbolism and proposed it as a system, and therefore the present study is based mostly on the criticism of his works. In the scope of the present study we chose to apply the abovementioned method to the novel “Pirihan” written by Elif Şafak. The novel abounds in symbols and mystical codes and, no doubt, constitutes an interesting material for the research. The novel itself is a story of an androgynous man, and throughout the text the reader observes the protagonists’s efforts to return to his real self. Our hero starts his adventure with a tekke (dervish lodge) life, not complying with the norms accepted by Islam society, then finds his love in İstanbul, and finally gets rid of his androgyny.

Keywords

Archetypical Symbolism, androgyny, great individual, inner self-esteem, adventure.