HEALING NEUROTIC EFFECTS BY RESISTING AND WELCOMING TRAUMATIC MEMORIES THROUGH PERSONIFICATION OF PLACES IN LETTERS TO MY MOTHER
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Abstract
Crimean-born novelist, poet, and British resident Cengiz Dagci’s award-winning novel Letters to My Mother (1988) covers the role of recalling geographical places as a healing facilitator for its characters because of their previous traumatic experiences and current sufferings. His novel comprises fifteen letters written in retrospection or flashback technique regarding time and place. Dedicating his physical life to England after being captivated by Germans during the Second World War provides insights into the neurotic effects of traumatic memories of an immigrant who devoted his whole life to writing about his country and people, though banned and prohibited at times, in order to have the voice of his nation heard in the world. In his fiction, the places Kiziltas and London adopt the roles of various symbols and images to reveal the traumatic effects of the war and confiscations, sanctions, and exile of his nation in his motherland Crimea as well as his isolation and estrangement in his physical world in England. Letters to My Mother reveals the neurotic effects of the confiscations, exiles, detentions, missings, and deaths witnessed once in the author's motherland. This study tries to analyze the power of remembering to cope with traumatic memoirs by adopting the technique of resisting and welcoming as a healing facilitator with the symbols and images of the novel's setting.