Structure and theme in the narratives of Hasan Ali Toptaş in terms of alienation

Alienation is the state of being alienated from one's self or from society as a result of his/her behaviours and attitudes, and in a more advanced level, s/he experiences a break. Thinkers working in many different fields such as sociology, psychology, political science, and economy have tried to explain how alienation, which they have approached from different aspects, occurs in the individual and social plan. The revealed explanations put forward that alienation is related to developments such as the dominance of capitalist understanding after the modernization process, the dominance of consumption culture, and innovations in the technological field. The emergence of these developments in the West goes back further, but the increase in the urbanization rate in Turkish society especially since the middle of the 20th century, the phenomenon of migration from the periphery to the centre and the big city and the rapid developments in the technological and scientific fields in the 1980s are among the factors that accelerated the phenomenon of alienation. Certainly, it is out of the question that the processes of change experienced in societies do not affect the literature that is intertwined with the society, the author who is a member of the society, and the literary work that cannot be thought of independently from the society in which it was written, even though the reality phenomenon is in the fictitious realm. Considering the historical development of the genres of novel and story in Turkish literature, except for a few writers until the1970s and apart from the themes of the east and west problematic, the place of women in society, false westernization, the oppressor-oppressed, there are no writers and works bringing the topics such as the inner world of the individual, the problem of existence, the conflicts with himself and the society into question. The theme of alienation began to take place in Turkish literature only in the 1960s, and it turned into a theme that focused on novels and stories with the works of pioneering writers such as Oğuz Atay and Yusuf Atılgan. Hasan Ali Toptaş, who stepped into his literary life in the 1980s, began to write in a period when modernist and postmodern influences were just beginning to appear in Turkish narratives. He finds a unique place in Turkish novel and storytelling with its language approaching poetry, the difference in fiction, and the forms of expression developed outside the classical understanding at the level of time, place, and people, with the perspective that carries the individual's existence problematic to the thematic fiction. In the study, the narratives of Hasan Ali Toptaş have been examined in terms of structure and theme within the centre of alienation. In the first part, it has been focused on the life of the author and his literary process in the context of his literary personality and then the views, thoughts, and ideas about the concept of alienation in terms of contributing to the interpretation of his literary works have been discussed. In the second part, the novels and stories of the author have been examined and analysed in terms of structure. In the third part, after the texts of the artist have been analysed in the context of the themes that caused alienation, in the last part, Toptaş's works have been examined in terms of language and style. In addition, the works benefited during the study have been shown in the Bibliography section and a separate Hasan Ali Toptaş Bibliography has been added. Alienation, which is the opening concept of the thesis, took a focal position in the structure and theme, language and style studies of Toptaş narratives. In addition, the approaches of society, author, text, and reader-centred criticism theories to literary works have been taken into account in the necessary sections.