An Allegory of Unthinking Slave
Chinghiz Aytmatov's The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
Abstract
One of the main characters of Chinghiz Aitmatov’s novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, Mankurt, is a Kyrgyz who is captured by the enemy, who thereafter erases his memory as a means of enslavement. Aitmatov portrays Mankurt as the embodiment of the effects of Soviet cultural dominance over Eurasian communities. Subsequently, the word mankurt entered the terminology of psychology and became tantamount to the word “assimilated.” Therefore, Aitmatov’s allegory should not be considered as a quilted point of an ideology for the sustenance of a certain identity; rather, it should be treated as the potential for the rejection of learning to live for the other; and the author must not be underrated and underappreciated by degrading this universal message. It should not be forgotten that the possessiveness of a certain group towards an author brings along the distance that others will keep, which renders him the other for them.
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