Literature is one of the oldest and most impressive ways of expressing oneself. One of the most interesting titles of literature, which allows us to tell everything that we can fit into dreams without any limits, or to “understand” from the reader’s eye, is, of course, the person himself.
We often describe our species as intelligent and sophisticated, and yes; We are both an intelligent and an advanced species. But no matter how much we have developed as a human being, there is a savage and primitive part of us that we cannot destroy. This wild and primitive side of us is a big problem for human beings as social beings, because it brings with it violence, uncontrolled power and instinctive competition. Literature, whose subject is human, naturally has many stories in which these characteristics of human beings are told without fear. In this list, we will share with you 10 books that you must read about the struggle of man with himself and with society.
Red Monday – Gabriel García Márquez
Red Monday, one of Márquez’s most successful works, which can be ranked first in the list of writers who most successfully describe human psychology and the place of humans in society; Although it does not make its name as popular as Love in the Days of Cholera or One Hundred Years of Solitude, it is one of the stories that best describes the dark side of the society created by man.
A book about a murder that “everyone knows will be committed”, as it is most commonly used; While conveying the perspectives of dozens of people in a whole town on death, crime and social concepts such as “honor” over the impending murder, it also sheds light on how people can be inconsistent, biased and liars. Quite short and impressive, Red Monday is an exquisite work on man and the terrible oppression that society puts on man.
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Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men is one of the works that most “softly” describes the naive and criminal side of man. While describing the good-hearted and innocent person on the one hand, the book, on the other hand, which refers to the desire for power and evil in human beings, is among the classics of the history of literature. It hits us in the face like a big slap with its unexpected ending.
The book, which tells about the experiences of two agricultural worker friends looking for a job by traveling from farm to farm, after one of them committed “crimes unknowingly”, is at the top of the list of classics that everyone should read.
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The Portrait of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
After the backlash, The Picture of Gray was republished “simplified” with Wilde’s permission. Even in its censored form, it is a very impressive and striking book.
The Portrait of Dorian Gray, which tells how Dorian, a man obsessed with beauty and youth, moves away from all other human values in order not to lose these two values, is also the only published novel of Oscar Wilde.
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Autumn Land – Ray Bradbury
Although it does not meet the concept of “novel” in our title, Ray is the successful author of classic works such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. A compilation of Bradbury’s stories, Autumn Country is a collection of successful works that tell death, one of the greatest mysteries of oneself, in various ways.
Ray Bradbury, one of the most successful writers of Fantasy and Science-fiction genres, includes plenty of fantastic elements in his stories in Autumn Country, but he does this so successfully that it is not possible to question the reality in the stories. The variability of the concept of death, which is at the center of the stories, reveals the helplessness of people against this concept. If you are looking for a bedside book these days, if dark stories that will suit winter will please you, you should definitely add Autumn Country to your reading list.
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A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
One of the darkest dystopias ever written for humanity, A Clockwork Orange is also the most different. The established dystopia is not just about robots destroying people, attacks from outer space, or some kind of doomsday scenario; a dystopia based on the emergence of violence directly within human beings.
Basically, we can say that human errors and evil form the basis of all dystopias, but still, A Clockwork Orange is a very different work, both with its unique language and the way it expresses corruption. If you read an alternative dystopia; If you want to observe violence, corruption, pure evil and the destruction of social values, A Clockwork Orange should definitely be on your list.
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Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Lord of the Flies is by far one of the best books on human evil ever written. The book, which wonderfully describes the place of terror and violence in people through the children we always remember with their innocence, tells the struggle for power, power and survival of a group of children who fell on a deserted island. The war, which was fought under difficult conditions at first, turns into a fight with oneself after a while, and the definition of a child disappears.
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José Saramago – Blindness
One of the most successful and unforgettable works of world literature, Blindness is a work that will make you question what it means to be human. The concepts of justice, violence, freedom and reality come to the fore in the novel, which tells the great chaos that humanity has been dragged into after an epidemic of ‘blindness’ that started suddenly, through a group of people.
You can read this novel, which tells a striking story about how a society that has lost its sight, ‘blinds’ to everything, by thinking about the society we live in today.
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Knut Hamsun – Hunger
Hunger is one of Hamsun’s most successful and impressive works that make him stand out on the literary scene. In the work, which tells the struggle of a poor and lonely young person trying to become a writer, the effect of ‘starvation’ on the character and behavior of a person is explained through the most striking examples.
The story of the character who sucks his own blood to fill his stomach, tramples on his pride, begs, and ‘forces’ stealing will fill your mind with question marks when you finish.
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Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
For those who haven’t read it yet, it is a must-read for everyone; Crime and Punishment, a cult work. This shocking story, which teaches us crime and punishment by presenting opposing concepts such as good – bad, right – wrong, should definitely take its place in your library and in your mind as soon as possible.
The story, in which we follow step by step a man who thinks that killing a ‘bad’ and harmful usurer is a beneficial and right decision, faces the consequences of this decision, allows us to examine and understand from every aspect whether the justice that individuals believe it provides is valid.
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Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Another world classic, To Kill a Mockingbird describes concepts such as racism, social prejudices and justice with an impressive conflict. In the story, where we look at all these concepts from the eyes of a child, a deep look at the problems that are still valid for the whole world is taken through a fictional town.
The story, which progresses on the frustrating problems of a character who is assigned to defend a black person who is wrongfully accused of a groundless claim, with the whole town due to this duty, is the simplest and plainest version of everything he wants to tell because the main character is a child. engraves in our minds.
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