The Importance of Frivolous Youth Rachel Lynch 12th Grade

Elif Batuman’s debut novel The Idiot deals with the theme of self-discovery through the vessels of love, loss, and language. The Idiot follows Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, through her freshman year at Harvard in 1995; the reader watches Selin discover email, fall in love, and realize that she is doomed to become a writer. Soon after arriving at Harvard, Selin strikes up a relationship with Ivan, a graduate student in her Russian class, over email and finds herself in love with him, despite the fact that they rarely interact in person. At the end of the school year, Ivan travels to Turkey to visit his family, and Selin, desperate to be close to him, volunteers to teach English to children in the Turkish countryside. Ultimately, Selin’s time is wasted on Ivan, but the novel’s ending leaves the reader hopeful that Selin has discovered something new about herself. Batuman uses humor, symbolism, and setting to convey the novel’s main theme of self-discovery.

Batuman contrasts dry humor and devastating earnestness to underscore the absurdity of Selin’s lovestruck plight and the gravity of the situation to Selin herself. Selin experiences periods of bland normality which are interrupted by hilarious events or deep...