The White Castle

   The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk was another interesting read for me. It details the experiences of a young man who is ambushed and captured by Turkish pirates and taken to the city of Istanbul. The young man later is given as a slave by a pasha (Turkish officer) to Hoja who is deemed his master. As the story unfolds, we learn that both men Initially, I was intrigued by the theme of identity and the overarching question of what makes us exactly us, and not someone else? As the story unfolded, I become confused about the characters of Hoja and the unnamed first-person narrator. “I looked up at his face and immediately---I was terrified.” Both characters eventually become ambiguous and the reader is left to determine who exactly is who. I’m sure this mystery was intentional by Pamuk, but it was disorderly for me as a reader.

    As an author, I appreciated Pamuk’s value of knowledge and the idea that we should constantly want to know new things. The story opens up with the narrator finding and reading an encyclopedia book. “I knew that at any moment the book would be snatched from my hand, yet I wanted to think not of that but of what was written on its pages. It was as if the thoughts, the sentences, the equations within the book contained the whole of my past life which I dreaded to lose... I desperately wanted to engrave the entire volume on my memory so that when they did come, I would not think of them and what they would make me suffer, but would remember the colors of my past as if recalling the cherished worlds of a book I had memorized with pleasure.” Self-knowledge and the knowledge of other things is important.

     Aside from identity and the question of “Are we ever really who we say we are,” A significant theme that I noted throughout the novel was the peculiar relationship between the master (Hoja) and slave. To each other they are alter egos and antagonists, but their existence could also be indirectly related to the opposition once held between the culture of the East and the West and the contrasts of fiction and reality. As the story continues, Hoja becomes increasingly obsessive in extracting all knowledge and ideas from his slave. He wants to know everything from his studies in astronomy, geography, and phycology. Together, they seek to exchange not only identities but also beliefs, ideas, and memories. Their relationship is interesting as they seek a personal union.

   I loved Pamuk’s writing style. There’s great imagery is describing the setting of the novel. Also, the storytelling aspect of the plot kept me intrigued. I wasn’t too keen on the repetitive theme of identity. After a while, it became dull. I appreciated the underlying questions and the mind games that I asked of myself after reading the book. Overall, it was an okay book.