Apartment Life and Cahit Zarifoglu’s Short Story Titled “Eksik Yol” in the Context of Isolation and Estrangement of the Modern Individual

Abstract

Cahit Zarifoglu is a prolific author who wrote in various genres of literature. Studies which focus on Zarifoglu’s story writing are generally content with evaulating his story book Ins. However he has a few stories that are not included in this book. “Eksik Yol” is one of these stories that we encounter in his diaries entitled Yasamak. The artist wrote this story after he experienced an interesting event while he was looking for a flat in Ankara. Throughout his life Zarifoglu observed the society in which he breathed with a special interest. Thus he managed to represent the difficulties he encountered in the modernization process impressively. “Eksik Yol” focuses on a young man living in a modern, ten-storey apartment building. As the modernization process accelerates in modern cities which remind us of doomsday, an individual who lives in a monstrous concrete mass, devoid of spirit and aesthetics, becomes increasingly isolated and estranged from his surroundings, and even to himself. Sincere relationships have changed into inadequate, formal and superficial touches. Additionally multistorey concrete buildings which encircle cities contribute to the process of alienation of the human being. In other words modernization and urbanization left ruinous effects on an individual’s soul. “Eksik “Yol” deserves to be examined closely because it is a text reflecting all these changes.