Existence is an action that takes place between existence and non-existence. The reflection of this action on philosophy with an ontological background and forcing the individual to search for meaning constitutes the thought of existentialism. Existentialism, where philosophers and thinkers could not find a common ground, stands out as a philosophical thought that emerged in France after the Second World War. One of the phenomena of this thought is literature and literary works in this context. Yusuf Atılgan is one of the authors who applied existentialism, which has become more common in literary works thanks to the treatment of Jean Paul Sartre in his novels, to his works in Turkish literature. It is possible to see that existentialist discourses are used intensely and strongly both in the novels and stories of Yusuf Atılgan, who started to produce works after 1950. In this study, some basic problems and conflicts such as identity, alienation, loneliness, rulelessness, suicide, sexuality that exist in Yusuf Atılgan's stories and emerge within the framework of existentialism, have been analyzed thematically. As a result of the examination, it has been determined that Yusuf Atılgan used an existentialist discourse in his stories, as he did in his novels, and that he fictionalized his stories with the thematic elements mentioned above.

Existentialism, Yusuf Atılgan, existence and non-existence, story