The Perception of Life, the Will to Life, and the Decline of Hope of the Protagonist Ahmet Cemil in Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil’s Novel Mai ve Siyah

Abstract

One of the issues that thinkers and novelists delicately focus on is the meaning
of life, the perception of life, and the interpretation of life. According to the German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, life itself is the “will to power”. The “will to power” has
both a positive and a negative meaning. Yet the “will to power” is seen in every living
being, even in the will of the servant there is the will to be the master. However, because
there is no equality in the “will to power”, some people are stronger, while others are
weaker. In the perspective of the life of “an active person”, there is a struggle, free will,
an affirmation of life, and saying “yes” to life despite all the pain. Whereas the “passive
person” is characterized by decline, despair, and denial of life.
Ahmet Cemil, the protagonist of Servet-i Fünûn novelist Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil’s
novel Mai ve Siyah, wants to bring his work to life with his desire for fame, to keep his
mother and sister İkbal free from financial difficulties and to marry the girl he loves,
Lâmia. However, almost all of these dreams end in disappointment. Ahmet Cemil’s
temperament and disappointments affect his way of perceiving life and making sense
of life. In this study, the temperament of the protagonist Ahmet Cemil, as well as his
perception and interpretation of life, are revisited through Nietzsche’s conceptualization
of the “will to live”. The analysis focuses on pivotal events such as the death of his sister
Iqbal, the marriage of his beloved Lâmia to another person, his thwarted aspirations to
write a particular work, and his subsequent journey to the desert in response to these
disappointments.