"A Turkish Woman in the Oedipus Complex: Orhan Pamuk's 'The Red-Haired Woman'"

The two dominant and competing myths come from ancient Greece and Persia (Greece and Iran today are Turkey’s Western and Eastern neighbors): the Oedipal myth from Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, where son unknowingly kills father, and the legend of Rostam and Sohrab from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, where father unknowingly kills son. The myths can be read as generational allegories about tradition and modernity, the East/West conflict, Islam and secularism, and even socialism and capitalism.

Duke Scholars

Author Erdag Göknar Asian & Middle Eastern Studies