From reality to myth; A Perusal of Friday, or The Other Island, a novel by Michel Tournier

Authors

Abstract

Tournier, in the novel Friday or the Other Island which can be assigned as the recreation of the novel Robinson crusoe by Daniel Defoe, expresses his own philosophic standpoints by utilizing myths. The writer delineates the solitude and miscellaneous difficulties that the hero of the novel faces, but he depicts the spiritual changing ways in the pacific ocean. Making an acquaintance with the island native boy, Friday, helps him get rid of cosmopolitan affairs and become aware of the mysteries of nature and the spirital world. To become acquainted with the naturalistic and impure world Tournier tries to utilize symbols and myths and escape from the material world to be closer to the spiritual one and mythical conditions. The text as an opposition to the Western civilization, tries to help man to find that human nobility can be retrieved. With the delineation of myths and symbols, this fiction tries to depict how the story gets rid of material affairs and reaches spiritual pleasure.

Keywords