SIMULATED MEMORY IN JUREK BECKER’S WORK “JAKOB DER LÜGNER (JAKOB THE LIAR)”
JUREK BECKER’İN “JAKOB DER LÜGNER” ADLI ESERİNDE SİMÜLASYON BELLEK

Author : Şenay KIRGIZ
Number of pages : 119-133

Abstract

A lie is the equivalent of a concept which does not operate through a suitable procedure in terms of reality, as opposed to the meaning “reality” or in other words “truth” contains. Although lying is not a behavior which is approved of by social and moral rules, the term “deception” according to Mitchell and Thompson, it is “a made-up communication which aims at providing benefit to the source”(Mitchell & Thompson, 1986: 247). This definition brings a different point of view to the concept of lying. The act of lying should not merely be regarded as fooling the other person. In some cases, lying can also be expressed as improving situations under bad conditions. Simulation is a concept used to express, “the reproduction of a tool, a machine, a system, an operating style unique to a subject in an artificial manner through a model or a computer program, with the purpose of analyzing, exhibiting or explaining it” Baudrillard, 2011: 6). It is an artificial repetition of its original. The work “Jakob der Lügner (Jakob the Liar)”, written in 1969 by Polish writer Jurek Becker, who is one of the key names of DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) Literature, depicts the life of a group of Jewish people who live in a Jewish ghetto in the Polish capital Warsaw. The main character Jewish Jakob Heym tells stories involving lies in order to prevent the suicides taking place in the ghetto. At this point, the work deals with Heym’s creation of a simulated (artificial) memory which is made up of lies in relation to the other Jewish people who live in the ghetto. Heym’s stories are important in the sense that the ghetto people cling to life and these form an artificial fantasy world in their short-term memory.

Keywords

Memory, Jurek Becker, Simulation, Simulated Memory, Lie

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