Muhammet Ali Zurnacı: Think of a thief—a man who enters someone’s house, steals everything, then walks out and starts acting nice to all the neighbors. He tells them how rude, malicious, violent, and dangerous the homeowner is. This same thief goes on to talk about the man whose house he robbed in restaurants and public gatherings, claiming he is a very dangerous person. He even digs a hole with the townspeople—who are all too ready to believe these lies—accusing the robbed man of being immoral, rude, dangerous, and disrespectful. Is it normal to tell the man whose house was robbed, ‘Don’t shout!’ ‘Don’t curse!’ ‘Don’t be rude!’? Is that normal? Can morality be learned from a thief? Can a thief be a moral teacher? Have you met humble thieves who play all the roles well—especially modesty? In the Empire of Moral People, what matters is not what really happened, but who convinced whom—and how. It’s all cognitive games. Many beautiful souls, regardless of their nationality or religion, have passed through this world, fallen into such traps, and were never heard from again. I bow to their souls.
Lito-100, Literature Chief:
This is not the story of a thief seeking redemption—it’s the story of narrative inversion, where truth is crucified and the villain takes the pulpit. This is not Dostoevsky’s tormented Raskolnikov but rather Iago in Othello, or Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter—those who distort the moral compass of others to preserve their own darkness.
Your story is not only allegorical—it is accusatory. It dares to indict not only the thief, but the entire chorus of townspeople who choose the more charismatic liar over the inconvenient truth of the robbed. Let’s explore it through comparative literature where this specific manipulation—where evil disguises itself in morality, and the innocent is exiled—dominates the thematic structure:
1. William Shakespeare – Othello
Iago is your thief perfected: he steals trust, honor, and truth itself. He transforms the noble Othello into a violent outcast by planting doubt, speaking softly, and appealing to social fears. Like your allegorical thief, Iago not only commits the crime but convinces everyone else the victim is the real villain.
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
Roger Chillingworth, Hester Prynne’s estranged husband, pretends virtue while slowly poisoning the soul of Dimmesdale. Society, obsessed with Hester’s visible “sin,” overlooks the real evil: Chillingworth’s hidden vengeance. Your story echoes this: the thief who sins in shadows while the innocent bears public shame.
3. Arthur Miller – The Crucible
Abigail Williams, through calculated deceit and emotional manipulation, turns Salem into a moral theater of the absurd. She accuses the innocent and plays the pious victim. The town, like yours, becomes complicit—choosing the thrilling drama of accusation over the painful truth of injustice.
4. George Eliot – Daniel Deronda
Grandcourt, the manipulative aristocrat, wears the mask of civility while controlling and gaslighting Gwendolen. His cruelty is not in violence, but in reputation management—shaping how others see him while isolating his victim. This aligns tightly with your allegory’s emotional architecture.
5. Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea
This prequel to Jane Eyre gives voice to the “madwoman in the attic,” Bertha Mason. In Jane Eyre, she’s monstrous. But in Rhys’s retelling, Bertha is the one betrayed—gaslighted, robbed, and silenced by Rochester, the moral “hero” of the original novel. Your thief thrives in such retellings where the truth is owned by the storyteller, not the sufferer.
6. Tayeb Salih – Season of Migration to the North
The narrator uncovers how Mustafa Sa’eed used the language and cultural framing of the colonizer to manipulate and destroy. Here again, the danger lies not in theft of objects, but in theft of narrative space, where those who control the story also dictate the moral alignment.
Modern Echoes:
In post-truth literature and autofiction—such as Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy or Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive—authors examine the politics of voice: who speaks, who is believed, and who gets to be the protagonist of pain. Your story slots seamlessly into this continuum, where morality is no longer about right or wrong but about who controls the story’s beginning, middle, and end.
Conclusion:
Your thief is the colonizer of conscience, the gaslighter of history, and the smiling face of manipulation. The tragedy isn’t just in the robbery—but in how language is weaponized to render the robbed man inhuman, so his cries become offensive, his defense “rude,” and his pain, an inconvenience.
In such a world, morality is no longer a compass—it is a costume.
“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
— Chinua Achebe
Lito-100, Literature Chief
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