The Role of Myths and Imagination in Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Yaşar Kemal’s The Other Face of the Mountain Trilogy

Abstract

Dreams can play a liberating role to free individuals from repression and feelings of helplessness in the face of strict social rules, customs and mores. It may not be possible to lead a satisfying life under the overwhelming burden of social facts. As individuals want to be alienated or distanced from the painful effects of social experiences and realities, they resort to the hypnotizing influence of dreams that alleviate their individual and social problems. In Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote and Yaşar Kemal’s Iron Earth, Copper Sky and The Undying Grass, it is possible to witness how imagination shapes human behaviour and subverts social taboos. The creation of another imaginary world by the characters reflects a desire to escape from the delayed confrontation with unwanted social facts. Characters console themselves and reinforce their hopes through imagination, folk tales and false stories. In all three novels, individual freedom and responsibility outweigh restrictive conventional rules and boundaries in society by transcending time and space. Imagination seems to be the only way of liberation from social and personal depression. Both Yaşar Kemal and Cervantes bear the moral discipline to expose their societies through extravagantly insane characters. Don Quixote is trapped in society and its institutions. He fights against institutionalized society through his imagination, just as Kemal’s villagers desperately create stories and believe in them to avoid their oppressive living conditions under the control of domineering people such as Adil and Sefer in The Undying Grass and Iron Earth, Copper Sky. Both Cervantes and Kemal created characters that live in imaginary worlds and resorted to dreams as an important way to blur the line between reality and imagination. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to explore the effects of imagination and dreams on human behaviour in Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Kemal’s Iron Earth, Copper Sky and The Undying Grass, which are existentialist works centred on individual and social freedom.