Bitter or Sweet

Do you believe in the power of zodiac signs? Astrology is a field of science observing the effects of the sky or sky phenomena on people. My zodiac sign is called ‘Taurus’. When the characteristics of Taurus people are observed, the most leading ones are that they are obstinate, interested in any kind of art and exaggeratingly fond of appetites of food. . I am not a constant follower of daily comments of horoscope; however, I believe that our lives are partly influenced by the movements of the stars’ motions. What is more, I could say that these characteristic features of my sign are parallel with my personality, habits, hobbies, and point of view for life. Briefly stating, I am known as a gourmet in my friendship environment as I am quite good at both cooking and tasting food. All the issues concerning food attract my attention. Thus, these gastronomic dimension of my interest has unignorable contributions to the reason why I first started reading the book I had bought from the story of Orhan Kemal called ‘Çikolata’ (Chocolate). I was in the age of eighteen and for the very first time I was attempting to leave my hometown and family for my education and manage to stand on my own feet. That book, ‘Büyümenin Türkçe Tarihi’ (Turkish History of Growing up) prepared by Murathan Mungan, was a collection of several Turkish short stories of variable Turkish authors and the views, comments and criticism writings received from other authorities. Chocolate was one of those stories included in that book guiding me in a positive manner on the way I grew up in one of the vital stages of life, youth.

The post effects of the story on me have not resembled with the ones in the beginning. They destructed all the passionate images wandering in my mind about the delicious reputation of chocolate which I had expected it to be reflected in the story and constructed new ones that are more realistic and satisfactory. After I finished reading the story I wanted to read it one more time and I found myself in rather a different atmosphere. What the story made me feel did not match with those in the earlier readings. It has a touching style and indeed has a significant role in my personal development. In addition to this, the story Chocolate will always be one of the literature productions that I could advice others without hesitation. In this essay I am going to examine this story in terms of characters, time and settings, themes, symbols and variable perspectives.

To begin with, I would like to inform you what the topic of the story is about. There are three children in front of the sweet seller’s shop window. Two siblings and the yoghurt seller’s daughter… The sister brings her brother to the barber shop earlier to get him a haircut. There, she suggests him to gather total amount of their money and buy a sum of chocolate for fifty. They are quite willing and exciting for the chocolate; however, there is an huge problem: The yoghurt seller’s daughter. The siblings know the taste of chocolate, they have eaten it each time their aunt has brought them with other kinds of sweet from Emirgan yet the yoghurt seller’s daughter does not. They try to make her leave the place as they do not want tos hare their chocolate with her; however, she utters frustrating words towards them. The siblings try to control their temper, nevertheless the provokative words of the daughter yield their temptation and they enter in the sweet seller’s shop, buy a sum of chocolate and eat it in front of the eyes of the yoghurt seller’s daughter. Then they leave the place by throwing the cover of the chocolate to the ground. The yoghurt seller’s daughter takes that cover and starts wandering. When she finds an isolated street she opens the cover and licks it several times. Let us have a look at the characters of this story. The main characters are the yoghurt seller’s daughter, the brother and the sister. The yoghurt seller’s daughter is the leading character and we can accept her as a protagonist. She is proud, whip-smart and sensitive. The only thing she has in her life is her family. Her mother is not alive. She lives with her father and sisters under the poor conditions. The siblings can be accepted as antagonists. The brother is naughty, spoilt and imprudent. He is observed with his impatient behaviours to buy chocolate. He is tried to be controlled by his sister in the beginning of their talk with the yoghurt seller’s daughter. Because the sister is older than the brother, she is more aware that the yoghurt seller’s daughter has no money affording to buy a piece of chocolate. Yet, in the end the sister also cannot stand the tempting replies of the yoghurt seller’s daughter and dares to eat what they get from the sweet seller’s shop near the daughter. That is why we can say that she is immature.

Other characters are the siblings’ father, the yoghurt seller, the barber, the big-breasted neighbour, sisters of the yoghurt seller’s daughter and the aunt. Siblings’ father is a driver. Here we can see that they can manage to live yet, they are not in the very good conditions as well. It is also seen in the way the siblings have their chocolate only by gathering their money. The yoghurt seller is described as a man in pain. He usually drinks alcohol and he starts driniking more after the death of his wife. We may perceive that he does not work as a yoghurt seller anymore, for their elder daughters should work in the tobacco factory to contribute the family budget currently instead of going on their education in the school. Other characters, the barber and the big-breasted neighbour have infatuation and it is observed by the brother in the beginning of the story. The next and final character is the aunt. She is not involved in the main characters; however, her role has a very significant place in this story. She is the sister of the siblings’ father and she is described a rich woman. Therefore, we can estimate that she is married with a rich man. The aunt is regarded as a very important person who is the source of pride by the siblings and the yoghurt seller’s daughter imagines her a legend or fairytale in her mind. She silently confesses that she always wish to have such a lady to bring her sweets and chocolate from Emirgan.

The exact time and place settings are not mentioned in the story, yet we can make some assumptions from the hints given by the author. As Chocolate was written in the 1960’s and the atmosphere in the environment of the story display the features of that period, we can examine the story under that time conditions. In the years of 1960’s there occured a military coup d’etat and the prime minister of that period, Adnan Menderes was executed. That is to say, there was chaos to rule the citizens of Turkey. In addition to these, the blue automobile with De Soto brand was very popular in those years. On the other hand, the district names such as Emirgan and Sarıyer give us right to say that the story happens in one of the small neighbourhoods of İstanbul where middle or low- income families live and flirtations like the one between the barber and the big-breasted neighbour could be seen.

Here we come to the theme elements leading on this short story. While I was reading the part in which the siblings avoid dividing the chocolate into three, the word stinginess came to my mind. The interesting thing is that they know they are to be blamed as they are guilty but stil they continue their acts. They are afraid of the ‘boiling tars in the hell’, waiting for them if they do bad things, which their father has told them. The other theme that makes me think of is inner conscious. In the end of the story the siblings eat their chocolate as cold as ice. We do not have any information about the post moods of them. They might be sorry about what they have done to the yoghurt seller’s daughter or they might keep on living as nothing happens. This issue is open to debates. Envy could be regarded as another theme in this concept. The daughter seems like a warrior in her chat with the other two, she never let them humiliate herself. On the other hand, she envies them and their aunt inside.

As I have stated above, I have discovered this story in a collection book which includes the interpretations of each story taking place in it. Ayfer Tunç, one of the notable authors in Turkish Literature, is the owner of this story’s interpretation. She claims that mercy is the leading theme of Chocolate. She states that every child learns what the feeling of mercy is, yet, the learning period is vital. If it is late, mercy is nothing but just like the information learned in the class and exposed to be forgotten. If it is learned very early, it becomes a burden on the shoulder of the children. Mercy should be experience in the right period. In that case, people become more people. The last element of theme, and from my point of view the most remarkable one is pride. The yoghurt seller’s daughter has one more alternative in that situation. She may want a little piece of chocolate from them, yet her honor comes first and she does everything to protect it.

After the theme elements we can have a look at the symbols striking in this story. Orhan Kemal mentions about the big pimple the aunt posses on her face while stating her physical features. There is an understanding that women having big pimple on the face are generally well-conditioned. This is most probably because of the rich female characters acting in the old Turkish movies. From the other point of view, the imaginary bad characters in the fairy tales called ‘witches’ are drawn with the big pimple on the big noses. In this perspective the fact that Orhan Kemal intends to load some kind of negative features to the aunt comes to minds. The aunt may be an arrogant woman. The other daughters of the yoghurt seller unvoluntarily quit going to school and they must go to the tobacco factory every day in order to earn money. In the story the factory is told with the siren voices it has. Sirens are commonly known as the irritating sounds used to alert creatures. It is understood that the daughters go to work redundantly. The last symbol that I could catch in this stroy is the colors. The author mentions about variety of colors of the gelatins of chocolate. These make the chocolate the center of attraction; however, when the siblings open the gelatin they end up with a dark stuff and this displays the bitter side of event happening on that street.

The turning point of the story is when the sister gives up controlling her brother and herself and goes in the sweet seller’s shop with her brother out of the blue. What is more, the climax can be observed when the yoghurt seller’s daughter finds an abandoned place on the street and starts licking the remnants of the chocolate from the gelatin. During the whole story, she behaves as if she has tasted the chocolate before. However, in the end her childish heart cannot bear those pressure and wants to learn what the taste of chocolate is like. The last words of the story hit the readers and carry them to the peak of the emotions: She licked it, she licked it.

When we come to examine this story in terms of sociological perspective, we had better remember the tough conditions of that period. In those days, there was poverty. People had difficulty in finding some butter to cook or materials to get warm in the cold weather. Chocolate was a symbol of luxury, it was unique. Not many people could reach it and eating these kind of things in crowd is accepted as an unkind behaviour. When we tend to compare these with today’s understanding we can notice that it is quite different. Nowadays everything we need is lying under our hands. People can reach whatever they want easily even if there is stil unequality in economical conditions among people. They are like the slaves of the consumption. They eat chocolate like a meal and the disease called Obesity is not an old term seen in Medical world. With the abundancy of the social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter, people take the photo of what they eat or where they travel. Then they share those photos to community without thinking the others’ situations.

The siblings know that their attitudes towards the daughter would be judged as unkind in society, however they have a strong excuse. They are children. There is a saying that ‘how a person is in the age of seven, will be the same in seventy seven.’ Maybe this is true, on the other hand some psychologists state that children are the most cruel creatures living on earth. Children have soul with both innocence and violence. The memories in which we are hurt in childhood are hardly forgotten, and they carry some prints throuhout the life span. These are all the subjects of psychological point of view. While making research on these issues, I came across with the term called ‘peer victimization’. This is the study of psychology investigating the alternating behaviours and attitudes of children towards each other in terms of socio-economical conditions. The surveys demonstrate that peer victimization is generally seen in the primary and secondary school students, especially on the ones having low socio-economical power, with the acts of bullying, giving nicknames, humiliating, isolating and etc. Who knows, the yoghurt seller’s daughter’s experience in this story may remain as an unhealing wound in the rest of her life.

We have come to the feminist approach on the characters. It is better to make generalizations; however I do not want to pass one thing without making any comments on it. I have noticed that female characters in the writings of Orhan Kemal are generally described as sufferers. If we make it specialized, we can give examples of the daughters of the yoghurt seller. They are in the age of school students, but difficulties in life drag them to factories instead of school. From the other point of view, the big-breasted neigbour girl has a very little role in the story, yet she gives us some clues about her personality from her description style in sexuality.

After examining the story through variable dimensions, now let us know who the writer of Chocolate, Orhan Kemal is. He was born in Adana in 1914 with the name of Mehmet Raşit Öğütçü and died in Sofia, Bulgary in 1970, then his body was transferred to İstanbul Zincirlikuyu Cemetary. His father Abdülkadir Kemali was a politician, and because of the political reasons he fleed to Syria. Orhan Kemal accompanied his father. Then he returned to Adana and started working as a laborer in the cotton factories. There he met his future wife, Nuriye and they got married. They had four children: Yıldız, Nazım, Kemali, Işık. He went to Bursa to join the army. During his military service, he entered in a jail because of the political reasons for five years. There he met Nazım Hikmet. In 1951, he moved to İstanbul and continued his life there. He started his carrier in literature with poetry. His first poem ‘Duvarlar’ was published by ‘Yedigün’ in 1939 under the pen name ‘Raşit Kemal’. In the year of 1940 other poems of him were published in the magazines ‘Yedigün’ and ‘Yeni Mecmua’. He started writing in ‘Yeni Edebiyat’ under the name of ‘Orhan Raşit’ in 1941. Meeting Nazım Hikmet was a turning point for his carrier as he was impressed by him for concentrating on writing stories as opposed to poems. Then his first story ‘Bir Yılbaşı Macerası’ was published in 1941. He took his final pen name in 1942 and continued writing in ‘Yürüyüş’ with the signature of Orhan Kemal. While writing in ‘Varlık’ in 1944, he found fame at last. His first collection of short stories is called ‘Ekmek Kavgası’ and his first novel is ‘Baba Evi’ which was published in 1949. He wrotte film scripts and plays as well. The most famous one is ‘İspinozlar’. Morever he has dramatisations: ‘72. Koğuş’, ‘Murtaza’, ‘Eskici Dükkanı’, ‘Kardeş Payı’, etc. Some novels of him ware adapted to television series such as ‘Hanımın Çiftliği’, ‘Kötü Yol’, ‘Evlerden Biri’. His 35 works were translated into English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, German, Greek, Arabic, Macedon and Urdu languages. After his death, a Novel Award started to be held for his memory in 1970.

In his works, he usually tells about the living standards of immigrants, the social structure seen in society, the relationships between workers and employers and daily struggles of petty people. Even if the experiences or events told in his Works are hard, he aims to present an optimistic view through his characters. His style and way of using simple expositions makes him one of the most significant authors of Turkish Literature.

To conclude, in this essay I have tried to examine the story ‘Chocolate’ with different perspectives and I would like to end my words with my translation of the memory of Orhan Kemal’s youngest son, Işık Öğütçü: ‘’We could understand if our father was cheerful or sad from the way he knocked the door. If it was hard, as most of the times, that means he was out of money. If his wallet got fat, even the door became like singing. We used to eat only one chocolate merely on Bayrams because of the poverty, the rest was kept by our mom for the guests. But, our father wouldn’t resist us and gave chocolates. He always enjoyed making us eat chocolate…’’

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Nilhan DEREOBALI
201273007
‘BITTER or SWEET’

Language and Social Behaviour
Prof. Dr. Aysu Aryel ERDEN

Jan, 2013
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Nilhan DEREOBALI
201273007
‘A RETIRED MOTHER’

Language and Social Behaviour
Prof. Dr. Aysu Aryel ERDEN

Jan, 2013