b'nowhere to my rented home and put me in my place powerlessness in the face of the external forces driving their alienation.NECIP: Necip, Necip.Consequently, Baydurs characters in Lemon embody the widespread cynicism (Baydur, 2022:16) and malaise in Turkish society, rendered powerless by fear and violence, unable to do anything but conceal themselves.Azizs overdramatic monologuing jumps from thought to thought in adisconnected manner, from openly lamenting about what kind of play hes forcedThe only character who remains constant and unchanging throughout the whole to be in to eulogising to Muhsin and Necip as Romans, referring to Ancient Rome.play is that of the old woman Berfinaz, who is a woman in her seventies, dressed Azizs forgetfulness of Necips name and his erratic shifts in thought are just a fewlike a typical seventy-year-old Turkish woman, with glasses, a pink headscarf, a examples of the absurdist elements woven throughout Lemon. Immediately afterblack bag and grey coat (Baydur, 2022:20). Her first onstage appearance occurs this, the doorbell rings and the three characters relationships change as a newwith her knocking on the door and asking a question. character, Asli, a young woman and old friend of Azizs enters. This change is not immediately evident to the audience but revealed by dialogue. BERFINAZ: Has Ouz arrived, my son?MUHSIN: Who is Ouz?AZIZ: Muhsin! You idiot. Just what the moment asked for. Uncle, please sayAZIZ: Welcome, Aunt Berfinaz. Ouz hasnt arrived yet, but hell be here something to him. shortly.NECIP: Muhsin, you scoundrel, dont interrupt the conversation. (He allows Berfinaz inside, sitting her down next to Necip)(Necip has in an instant become a fatherly, uneducated, merry, worldly andBERFINAZ: Im so tiredwell-liked relative) (Baydur, 2022:20)MUHSIN: Sorry father. (Baydur, 2022:17) Akbulut argues that Berfinaz, who is the typical image of the old Turkish woman and the only consistent figure of the play, represents the common, ordinaryThroughout the play, each shift in the characters is marked by the sound of a working class of the country. Akbulut suggests that her constant state of being in violin. Through the constant changes in their personalities and relationships,and out of sleep onstage, waking only to misinterpret or catch the tail end ofpaired with the comedic touch of Aziz repeatedly forgetting Necips name, Baydurothers conversations, positions her as the mouthpiece of ordinary people, who, draws the audience into the theme of alienation with this technique that Akbulutwhen they catch up with the agenda, they usually hold onto it from the wrong calls the play within the play. This refers to the fact that their identities are place (2017:90). The wrong place Akbulut refers to is clearly the events of 1980, constantly shifting, moving around and constantly playing within the play itself.but her statement unfairly blames everyday people for the societal decline that Although the characters change continuously Akbulut states that they are followed, an assessment that is both untrue and unjust based on the available connected in a manner akin to train compartments, with an underlying organiccontext. connection (2018:89). Expanding further on Akbuluts suggestion, it can be argued that this connection is their shared sense of disorientation and alienation in post- In fact, it can be argued that Berfinazs character is one of the very real tragedies of 1980 coup Turkey. In a society where loyalty to the state takes precedence over the play. Berfinazs son, or grandson, Ouz is mentioned by Berfinaz and the other intellectualism and free discussion, the characters identities have become characters but never arrives. The statement of his absence along with the fact that increasingly fluid and unstable. From a cultural materialist perspective, like manyno one has any knowledge of where he is or where he went can be interpreted as ordinary Turkish people during that time, the lack of value in creative thought hasbeing due to Ouz being one of the many victims of the 1980 coup detat, arrested reduced the characters to little more than economic value (Prasad, 2017:136).and placed in a military prison or simply disappeared and never seen again. In Under these conditions where an individuals worth is defined solely by their typical absurdist theatre tradition, the characters are completely devoid of action exchange value, now considered the supreme touchstone of human experience(Akbulut, 2017:90) and simply accept Ouzs absence as a fact of life. In the (Prasad, 2017:136); alienation becomes an inevitable consequence.character of Berfinaz, Baydur highlights the real-life tragedy of the many mothers who never heard from their sons and daughters again or were separated from them Within this context the characters actions and shifts in personality become for a long time due to the coup detat.understandable as a shared struggle to maintain a sense of self. With this context the characters repeated action of drinking is a form of self-medication, used not only to numb their intellectual thoughts but also to dull their sense of10 11'