My manhood is my nightmare: Threshold of manhood, theatricality, performance in Reşat Nuri Güntekin's novels

This thesis focuses on the male protagonists in Reşat Nuri Güntekin's novels published before 1927. At this point, the male protagonists in the novels Harabelerin Çiçeği, Dudaktan Kalbe and Bir Kadın Düşmanı are analyzed within the framework of the concepts of masculinity threshold, theatricality and masculinity performances. The novels point to different men and performances of masculinity in terms of the male characters they present and the issues they are based on. For this reason, the concepts of masculinity threshold, theatricality and masculinity performances are analyzed in each of the three chapters through different issues and narrative strategies. While analyzing the novels with the close reading method, attention was paid to factors such as narrative strategies, the discourses of male characters, the presence/absence of discourse and action throughout the novel, the ways in which the novel's characters relate to their environment, which female and male characters are brought face to face, childhood traumas, and bodily signs. In the light of all these analyzes, it has been seen that masculinity is not a singular, consistent and guaranteed structure. It has been concluded that masculinity is a series of theatrical actions that are guided by the desires of the subject, cannot be fixed, contain internal conflicts and are always in need of renewal. At this point, it has been seen that the threshold of masculinity is performed differently by each man, contains misconceptions and is not a concept that includes all men.