A Father Who is Neither Dead nor Alive: Analysis of the Position of the Symbolic Father in the Stories Dry Oak Wood and My Father's Yard and Dogs

"Patricide" is one of the myths that has been focused on in Freud's psychoanalytic knowledge and subsequently by Lacan, particularly referred to as the "Oedipus Complex." Because writers of fiction have also paid special attention to various myths, we see their reflection in literary works. In this study, using qualitative and quantitative analysis methods and relying on Lacanian psychoanalytic principles, we first aim to show the superiority of the signifier over the signified through examples from the stories Dry Oak Wood and My Father's Yard and Dogs. And then, we demonstrate the presence of a stronger symbolic father figure than the physical and natural father in these stories. The findings indicate 1. Teke is a pervert subject because of protecting his father's name, and Pirbaba's children are obsessive subjects because of their desire to destroy and abandon their father. Also, the eldest son of the family is the first pervert subject due to the murder of the father, and the father is the first pervert subject due to the protection of the law or the desire of the father; 2. The children of Pirbaba and the eldest son of the family are believed to be freed when the father is killed, unaware of the fact that when the sign is broken, another sign replaces the father and protects the father's name; 3. The members inside the yard had experienced freedom as "juissance" only when, according to the narrator, they had transgressed the desire of a great other in a "sneaky" way i.e., bypassing the gaze and deviating from another grand desire.