Abstract:

As a place that contradicts social and personal minds, literature can also be an open, breathing tool against it, as it can be a means of tackling the social memory. With nature, literary memory works can be the object of a field where the heathen is built, preserved and transmitted. In particular, the novel is one of the written-based elements of cultural memory, which can exceed the limited transmission capacity of oral communication memory. Each of the characters of the novel has his own past, his own memory, with another expression of accumulation. These personal memories may cause characters to conflict or agree with each other. Furthermore, by moving into cognitive interaction with their fictional circles, it can also become a "memorial figure" that reflects the daily and traditional life of the period. Therefore, every classic novel is a dynamic, material and spiritual place that transmits social memory from generation to generation and deserves to be studied in this regard. The acquisition of literature (especially historical novels) in memory works reveals the possibility of the hidden memories in novels to be addressed from the present time, ensures the understanding of the elements that form the present social memory. In this article, Reşat Nuri Güntekin, a writer of the early Republic period. Immediately after the World War, the Green Night novel, which describes the idealist teacher Ali Shahin’s struggle with the city’s strong structures and the changes brought by war conditions, was discussed and studied from the perspective of memory work. Finally, it turned out that the Green Night novel is a high-value novel that aims to build a new social memory with the characters stuck between personal and social memories, with the inner memories, with the opposite memories and with the spaces of the memories. Therefore, the similarities and differences between today’s social memory and the social memory of the time the writer’s work was painted were also possible to see.

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