Abstract:

Generally known for the Maupassant style of short story writing, Turkish writer Ömer Seyfettin does not explicitly provide an in-depth psychological analysis of the characters he constructs in his works. Therefore, this endeavor falls to the readers of his short stories. However, no instance can be expected to produce discourse independent of their real-life experience or socially constructed teachings. Therefore, it is significant that the philosophical and psychological aspects of the literary characters built by the writers be analyzed in-depth. In this study, the actions and discourse of the protagonist Sermet Bey are analyzed through Cartesian doubt besides phenomenological considerations to uncover the psychological aspects of the character in the short story titled “Perili Köşk” by Ömer Seyfettin, in which the social transformation of the era is recounted with an ironic attitude to the superstitions held by the society. It is believed that the method employed in discovering the character’s psyche in this study could guide the methodology of relevant future studies. The analysis reveals the skeptical personality of the protagonist in the short story, with the eyesight and sense of hearing supposed by the protagonist as providing deceptive and misleading perceptions and the sense of touch adopted as the only medium to rely on with a view to indirect experience. It is concluded that the skeptical attitude of the protagonist does not bear a complete loyalty to the Cartesian doubt under mind-body dualism due to the role appointed to the sense of touch as opposed to the sleep-wake analogy of Descartes in which he rejects the reliability of this sense, rather the psyche of the protagonist in this short story could be analyzed through the phenomenological considerations and premises.

Keywords: