Ailelerde Yabancılaşma ve Çocukların Eğitim Yaşantısındaki Bozulma: Ann Tyler’ın Teenage Wasteland adlı Kısa Hikâyesi (1983)

Bu araştırma makalesi, modern dünyadan sonra postmodern dünya içerisinde aile bireylerinin birbirlerinden uzaklaşma ve yalnızlık yolu ile parçalanma yaşadıklarının altını çizerek çocukların eğitim yaşantısında istenmeyen başarızırlık sonucuna sebep olduğunu Amerikalı yazar Ann Tyler’ın Teenage Wasteland adlı kısa hikâyesini ele alarak vurgulamaktadır. Bu özellikler, aynı zamanda insan yaşantısını mahveden modenizminde sahip olduğu özelliklerdir. Tyler, T. S. Eliot’un The Waste Land adlı uzun şiir çalışmasına benzer bir şekilde hem verimsiz topraklardaki hayal kırıklığını hem de sosyal yaşamda görülen yabancılaşmayı ve anlamsız yaşantının sebep olduğu dramatik monoloğu sergiler. Aynı zamanda, ebebeyinlerin ve çocukların yoğun çalışma hayatından dolayı karşılıklı iletişim kopukluğuna sahip olduklarını belirtmektedir. Çocuklar ailelerinin çalışma hayatlarındaki yoğunluktan dolayı eğitim yaşantılarında başarısızlık yaşadıklarını ortaya koyarlar. Dolayısıyla, bu hikâyedeki genç ve ebebeyinleri yabancılaşmış dünyalarında karşılıklı iletişim kopukluğuna sahiptirler. Seçilmiş olan kısa hikâyeki bu çorak toprak aslında gençlerin hayatlarında yaşadığı anlamsızlık ve amaçsızlığı vurgular: Tyler, yaşanılan boşluğun ise çocukların başarısızlığına ve ailelerindeki huzursuzluğa sebep olduğunu belirtir. Aslında, aile bireyleri artık çalışma dünyalarının kurbanı olmuşlardır: Yanlızlık ve yabancılaşma hissini böylece iç dünyalarında kucaklamışlardır. Dolayısıyla, bu makale belirtilen kısa hikâye içerisinde bir psikoanalitik izlenim takip edecektir.

Alienation in Families and the Breakdown in Children’s Educational Process: Ann Tyler’s Teenage Wasteland (1983)

This research article highlights that postmodern era after the modern period causes fragmentation because of the existence of alienation and isolation senses in family units and ends up undesirable failure in children’s educational process as reflected in American writer Ann Tyler’s Teenage Wasteland. Thereby, these are concurrently the basics of modernism that destructs human lives. Similar to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Tyler emphasizes the existence of a dramatic monologue deriving from the disillusionment in the infertile land and the alienation in social living. Tyler specifies the presence of a meaningless life and alienation for children. At the same time, Tyler concerns how parents become unable to deal with their children in their intensive working life. She hints that children become unsuccessful in their educational process due to their parents’ intensive working. Therefore, the teenager and his parents have mutual lack of communication in their alienated worlds. A “wasteland” in the target short story implies having the sense of loneliness which causes failure in children’s educational world and rises the disturbance in family units. Accordingly, family members are the victims of their working life and embrace the senses of alienation and isolation in their inner worlds. Therefore, this article will pursue a psychoanalytical consideration in the selected short story.

___

  • Carnegie, A. (1952). The gospel of wealth. In E. C. Kirkland (Ed.), The gospel of wealth and other timely essays, 3-50, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • Cohen, N. (2002). The Reconstruction of American Liberalism: 1865-1914, London: The University of North Carolina Press.
  • Cox, C. B. (1971). Joseph Conrad. Essex: Longman.
  • Desjardins, R. (2015). Education and social transformation. European Journal of Education, 50(3), 239-244, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26609272.
  • Eliot, T. S. (1986). The Waste Land. In M. H. Abrams et al (Eds.), The Norton anthology of English literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
  • Estes, S. B. (Fall 2005). Work-family arrangements and parenting: Are “family-friendly” arrangements related to mothers’ involvement in children’s lives? Sociological perspectives, 48 (3), 293-317.
  • Forghani, N. (2015). A Critical examination of postmodernism based on religious and moral values Education. International Education Studies, 8 (9), https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1074075.pdf
  • Hastings, C. S. (2014). Suffering and Coping in the novels of Anne. Tyler.://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/288058611.pdf
  • Hoffmann, G. (2005). From modernism to postmodernism: Concepts and strategies of postmodern American fiction. New York: Rodopi.
  • Kantarcıoğlu, S. (1997). Literary criticism: The major literary movements in western literatures. Ankara: Hatipoğlu.
  • Kantarcıoğlu, S. (2009). Edebiyat akımları: Plato’dan Derrida’ya. İstanbul: Paradigma Yayıncılık.
  • Keel, S. (2016). Introduction. Socialization: Parent–child interaction in everyday life, New York: Routledge.
  • Koçsoy, G. (2016). A note on child neglect in American victorianism: Henry James' the pupil. Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences, 15(2), 451-460, http://jss.gantep.edu.tr.
  • Köseman, Z. (2013). Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Eliot’s the Waste Land in the context of myth-making in Jungian perspective. Interactions, 22(1-2), 81-93, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/-a0328943981.
  • Köseman, Z. (2013). From the way to wealth to the gospel of wealth: The transformation of the concept of success in American literature from Benjamin Fraklin to Theodore Dreiser. Cambridge: Academica Press.
  • Köseman, Z. (2020). The Fisher King myth in T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land and Ann Tyler’s Teenage Wasteland. In Z. Antakyalıoğlu et al (Eds.), English studies in the 21st century, 72-86. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Lillehammer, H. (2017). The nature and ethics of indifference. The Journal of Ethics, 21(1), 17-35, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45204352.
  • Lyotard, J. F. (1984). The postmodern condition: theory and history of literature. G. Bennington and B. Massumi (Trans.). Vol. 10. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Petry, A. (1990). Understanding Anne Tyler. Columbia: University of Southern Carolina Press.
  • Porumbu, D. (2013). Relationship between parental involvement/attitude and children’s academic achievement. 5th international conferene edu-world 2012: Education facing contemporary world issues, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 76: 706-710.
  • Robertson, M. F. (1985). Anne Tyler: Medusa points and contact points. In C. Rainwater & W. J. Scheick (Eds.), Contemporary American women writers: narrative strategies. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
  • Rohner, P. R. & Rohner, E. C. (1981). Parental acceptance-rejection and parental control: Cross-cultural codes. Ethnology, 20(3), 245-260, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773230.
  • Rosetti, G. M. (2006). Imagining the primitive in naturalist and modernist literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
  • Tyler, A. (1995). Teenage Wasteland. In S. Marcus (Ed.), A world of fiction: Twenty timeless short stories, 111-127. California: University of California.
  • Wiebe, R. (1967). The search for order: 1877-1920. New York: Hill and Wang.
  • Willrich, P. R. (1992). Watching through windows: A perspective on Anne Tyler. The Virginia Quarterly Review, 68(3), 49, 497-516. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26437257
  • Wilson, D. M. (2018). Parents’ executive functioning and involvement in their child’s education: An integrated literature review. Journal of School Health, 2018; 88: 322-329.