Fate

Through the examination of Cem’s life, actions, and consequences, the narrative attempts to apply the ideas of fate and inevitability to a somewhat realistic context, whereas such ideas are usually found only in more mythic or parabolic contexts. The novel first introduces this idea with its emphasis on the story’s retrospective nature. The novel is written in the past tense, and it emphasizes the idea of the story as a first-person retrospective in the first lines of the novel: “I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineering geology and became a building contractor” (3). These statements seem innocuous at first, but they emphasize the importance of the subsequent events at Öngören as pivotal moments in Cem’s life. Instead of a prophecy or an explicit expression of fate, the novel examines fate as...