THE RITE OF PASSAGE: FROM SCRUMPING PLUMS TO STEALING HEARTS

Sets off as a natural being in his mother’s womb, man continues to protect this feature in the beliefs and cultures, on his journey to transform into a cultural being. As a result of this maturity process, which is cultural as well as biological, he completely transforms from a natural being into a cultural one and starts to take on social, cultural and religious obligations. This passage, which can be considered as an existence with a new identity, handled in a number of traditional narratives―particularly in the Turkish epics, folk tales and the Book of Dede Korkut― with symbolic elements. The rite of passage, which means the end of innocence, the formation of the individual in harmony with the social norms, and which paves the way to the marriages that are very crucial in respect to the continuity of the communities, transformed from apparent to latent manifestations in respect to the changing perceptions and circumstances of the modern social life. In this study, the maturity process of the child groups on the verge of the puberty, starting from plum scrumping, and with the passage into adolescence, turning into stealing someone’s heart away is analyzed from structural and functional perspectives. In the evaluation process, the oral material collected via interviews during the field study is also used. According to the findings, it is determined that, the relations between the meaning and functions of the journey of the individual in the puberty process from scrumping plums to stealing someone’s heart, and that of the puberty seen in the early cultural sources has not completely ruptured