Sirin Kahveci

Metaphorical Death of the Character and the Text's Consuming Power: Comparison of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Paul Auster's the Book of Illusions Sirin Kahveci

The author is already dead and the narrator is not reliable anymore, in the contemporary fiction. Then, is the reader alone while re-creating the narrative during the process of reading. Is s/he supposed to remain the only humanistic subject during this process or do we have the character as another living subject within the text? This book explores Ray Bradburry's Fahrenheit 451 and Paul Auster's Book of Illusions in order to find an answer to these questions. The characters of both of the novels are in the quest of saving the books and/or movies from being burned down. And while trying to save the works from the consuming power of the flames, they themselves are captured by the consuming power of the text. And apparently it turns out that after the author and the narrator, the character betrays the reader and leaves him/her alone with the text as the only living subject.