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COMMENTS ON THE COBBLER AND HIS
SONS BY ORHAN KEMAL
If there’s a need to summarize the main theme of “The cobbler and his
sons” briefly in general terms, it can be said that it’s a life episode
in which attitudes and manners of old and new, progressive and
regressive are in conflict….the drama of the lame cobbler and his family….the
mechanization of agriculture…the rise of prices in agricultural products
at full speed…..the flux of peasants to the big cities…..the dissolution
and collapse of small scale artisans losing their positions against the
speed of industrialization.
“From whichever religion,colour and race they may be, whatever language
they speak and wherever on earth they may live, humanbeings are engaged
in a fight for a happier life.The lame cobbler also conducts this kind
of a struggle,who is obliged to make living for his family.”
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THE COBBLER AND HIS SONS BY TAHIR ALANGU
This novel is the most powerful of the works he had created in the
recent years.It’s obvious that Orhan Kemal who narrates the dissolution
of rooted land owner families and medium and small scale artisans who
can’t position themselves against the mechanization of agriculture,rise
in prices,peasant influx,the acceleration of economic and social change,
in a style peculiar to him is most successful at these subjects.Oriented
to certain social issues,more towards the aspect in his lesser
novels,Orhan Kemal could find a better way in this novel of his;
attempting to enter the novel with a populous artisan family - the lame
cobbler and his sons. Crushing of the cobbler who returned from the war
of Tripoli, his leg cut and his family under new circumstances and their
tumling down to the lowest point of poverty in the cotton fields are
conducted with a strong and vivid narration.Here the old and lame
cobbler’s unableness to forget his own wealthy family home,his
struggling desperately in the pit that he has fallen, his helplessness
among the crowd of his sons and grandchildren, the whole family’s
writhing in the hands of malaria and mosquitos in the cotton fields and
the family of ten people who cling to themselves more and more as they
keep falling who do not understand the reasons of what’s happening.because
of hunger and misery, standing before the cobbler as an enigma, who
indeed could not conceive the things happenning between the earth and
the sky, are all told with a competency suitable to the requirements of
the essence. According to me,this is the most successful piece that
Orhan Kemal has written in the recent years. (1963)
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