Politics, Incarceration, and Innocence in Harold Pinter’s One for the Road and Melih Cevdet Anday’s İçerdekiler

Year 2024, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, 32 - 52, 16.03.2024

Murathan Gündoğdu

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10829685

Abstract

This study aims to compare two political plays, Harold Pinter’s One for the Road (1984) and Melih Cevdet Anday’s İçerdekiler (1965) with a focus on their thematic presentations of political oppression, incarceration and innocence. Influenced by different turning points in Turkish political history, both plays exhibit striking resemblances in depicting political oppression which includes physical and psychological torture, and the reality of incarceration that is experienced by innocent individuals who merely use their freedom of opinion and speech. Presenting critical reactions against the political injustices leading to the victimisation of innocent people, both plays display how political power is manipulated in the hands of the oppressors. The first part of this study examines both Pinter’s and Anday’s political views and criticism as well as their motives for writing the plays under discussion. In the second part, this study compares the two plays mainly in terms of their treatment of oppression and acts of cruelty against innocent individuals, concluding that the plays show similarities as both playwrights manage to demonstrate a universally horrifying picture of incarceration.

Keywords

One for the Road, İçerdekiler, Oppression, Incarceration, Harold Pinter, Melih Cevdet Anday

References

• Algül, A. (2015). Melih Cevdet Anday’ın Düşünce Yazılarında Sanat, Yazın ve Dil. [Art, Literature and Language in Melih Cevdet Anday’s Thought Writings]. (Doctoral dissertation, Hacettepe Üniversitesi). Retrieved from YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi.
• Anday, M. C. (2008). Bir Defterden. [From a Notebook]. Everest Yayınları.
• Anday, M. C. (2022). Toplu Oyunları II. [The Complete Works II]. Everest Yayınları.
• Burnham, G., Lafta, R., Doocy, S., Roberts, L. (2006). Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey. The Lancet, 368(9545), 1421-1428.
• Campaigning Against Torture (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_torture.shtml. Chiasson, B. (2013). Harold Pinter’s “More Precisely Political” Dramas, or a Post-1983 Economy of Affect. Modern Drama, 56(1), 80-101.
• Dirlikyapan, M. D. (2010). Melih Cevdet Anday’ın Absurd Tiyatrosu: Konuşa Konuşa İletişimsizlik. [Melih Cevdet Anday’s Absurd Theatre: Miscommunication by Talking]. Türkbilig/Türkoloji Araştırmaları Dergisi, 11(19), 213-224.
• Gussow, M. (1994). Conversations with Pinter. Nick Hern Books: London. Kemerci S. (2023). İçerdekiler’de İktidar: Devlet, Aydın, Toplum. [Power at İçerdekiler: The State, Intellectual, and Society]. Sanat ve İkonografi Dergisi, 4(1), 37-41.
• Özmen Akdoğan, Ö. (2020). Politics of Harold Pinter’s Dystopian Drama: One for the Road and Party Time. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 37(2), 330-340.
• Özmen, Y. D. (2008). Melih Cevdet Anday ve Sabahattin Kudret Aksal Tiyatrosunda Kadın-Erkek İlişkileri. [Male-Female Relationship in Melih Cevdet Anday’s and Sabahatting Kudret Aksal’s Theatre]. (Master’s dissertation, İstanbul University). Retrieved from YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi.
• Pinter, H. (1985). One for the Road with Production Photos by Ivan Kyncl and an Interview on the Play and Its Politics. London: Methuen.
• Pinter, H. (2005). Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth and Politics. The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/pinter-lecture-e-1.pdf.
• Silverstein, M. (1991). One for the Road, Mountain Language and the Impasse of Politics. Modern Drama, 34(3), 422-440.
• Taylor-Batty, M. (2014). The Theatre of Harold Pinter. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Visser, D. (1996). Communicating Torture. The Dramatic Language of Harold Pinter. Neophilologus, 80(2), 327-340. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00212110.