Thinking and Growing Together: Plants and Humans in Burası Radyo Şarampol

Abstract

Exploring the self and the world, growing up, friendship, journey, and memory are among the major themes in Şükran Yiğit’s literary texts. In addition, besides humans, non-humans also contribute to the narrative structure of the author’s texts. Therefore, considering the relationship between humans and non-humans is beneficial while examining the development of the mentioned themes. Yiğit’s novel, Burası Radyo Şarampol, published in 2020, tells the story of Filiz’s life from the character’s perspective while simultaneously emphasizing the turning points in the character’s past and Turkey’s social history. This paper tries to show how the novel portrays the relationship between humans and plants in a non-anthropocentric way by examining the novel from an ecocritical perspective. The novel does not describe plants only as background figures or energy sources for humans. In Burası Radyo Şarampol, plants play an active role in a person’s growth, exploring herself and the world and her relationship with her home, city, and friends. An orange tree helps the protagonist, Filiz, and a vegetable and flower garden helps Filiz’s friend, Ella, to construct their personal worlds and to become empowered. Therefore, the plants and the human-plant encounter benefit the development of the characters, plot, themes, and feminist criticism. In order to analyze how the plants are represented in the novel, this paper refers to the concepts of “deep ecology” and “self-realization” by Arne Naess. Moreover, this paper builds an argument by referring to Michael Marder’s inquiry on the hierarchy among beings, the concept he proposed, “vegetal democracy”, and the philosophical questions he asked about the distinguishing characteristics of plants.