Karabük Türkoloji Dergisi

Abstract

Hikmet Erhan Bener, one of the prominent writers of post-1950 Turkish literature, belongs to modernist Turkish literature in terms of the subjects he deals with and his novel technique. Alienation, isolation, sexuality and psychology are among his main subjects. Bener, who works in most genres of literature, is best known for his novel Böcek, published in 1982. Böcek, which seems to be a small novel, stands out as a dense and deep text and expects ‘attention’ from its readers. In fact, Bener narrates the twenty-four hours of Recai Bey, a police commissioner in the actual time of the novel, and reveals the reasons that push him to become a ‘bad’ man one by one through flashbacks. Recai Bey, who loses his father at an early age, loses his sister in a fire for which his mother blames him, is disliked and despised by his mother and uncle, is repeatedly confronted with the lack of love and repulsion that he knows very well in the jobs he works for short periods of time in the following years, during school and in his professional life. He fills the void left by the lack of love in his world with anger and develops a hatred against both people and animals. In this study titled ‘The Psychoportrait of Recai Bey in Erhan Bener's Böcek Novel’, after giving place to the factors affecting Recai Bey's psychology, we will try to discuss the psychopathological states he experiences.