Violence and Postcoloniality in Yaşar Kemal’s Memed, My Hawk

Abstract

For Raymond Williams, the deepest significance of the novel is its ability to advocate “social change” by presenting a realistic vision of the intricate relationship between individual and society. Without this “social dimension,” he argues, the novel moves towards acute “subjectivism,” which isolates the substance from its immediate environment. For Williams, it is imperative that in novels “society is seen in fundamentally personal terms, and persons, through relationships, in fundamentally social terms. The integration is controlling, yet of course it is not to be achieved by an act of will. If it comes at all, it is a creative discovery” (“Yaşar Kemal’s Novels” 85). And he adds, “Whenever I am asked to give an example of a contemporary novelist of this kind, my first name is Yaşar Kemal” (83).