Author(s): Didem YAYAN
Death, which is the opposite or continuation of life and therefore the determinant of the meaning of life, also appears in just the same way as it is in real life, in literary work, which is “a reflection of human life” with its classical definition. Death reflected in literary works with its different dimensions: Sometimes as the result of a disease, sometimes with the suicide of one of the fictive figures, sometimes in the form of death brought by the war, sometimes as a person’s own death or the death of a relative and in many other ways and in this way it becomes a symbol that can be interpreted in different ways in literature. In the short story Mirrorstory (ger. Spiegelgeschichte) by Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger, death is being handled from several aspects. In the story, a young women, who lost her mother when she was a little girl and who had to have her baby aborted is confronted this time with her own death. This confrontation turns within the structure of the story which is progressing from the end to the beginning, into a moment of awakening and regret for the main figure rather than just a simple leaving the world. It is observed that the boyfriend of the woman as a figüre, who did not experience death himself but witnessed death from outside, displays a distant attitude in the face of the death of both the woman and the baby. The fact of death is also handled with a philosophical background from a general perspective in the work. In this study, the phenomenon of death, which is handled from various angles in the short story Mirrorstorywill be discussed by using text-oriented method.
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