The White Castle - Essay Example

The White Castle Orhan Pamuk’s third novel, The White Castle, is a complex novel, if it is examined from several interesting angles. Basically, it explores the cultural complications arising from the situations created by an exiled life. In a way, it is a story of the characters that are compelled to seek new identity, as they are placed in a new cultural situation. In their ardent attempt to gain a new identity, everything rooted or fixed, be it personal, social, or national seem to get shaken. It also reveals the consequences when an attempt is made to restructure the existing culture with transcultural ideas. All these ultimately expose man’s vulnerability to failure or disaster, if modernizing oneself with borrowed ideas is done at the risk of loosing one’s own originality. Pamuk’s novel helps the readers to see the difference between the greatness of culture within one’s borders and the culture across the borders. Border here implies the physical as well as the psychic. At times the novel looks like a series of real historical events taking place, and sometimes it appears like the events created from the narrator’s fantasy. This paper is an attempt to examine the cross-border cultural implications in Pamuk’s novel, The White castle. But it is imperative to have a look at the developments of the events in the novel before making any critical analysis. There is a Preface to the novel which is important to understand the entire historical views of the novelist. But, here, a glimpse at the sequence of events will suffice to examine the cultural syndromes with which the central characters are fated to struggle. A few Turkish pirates capture a young Italian scholar who is on his way to Naples from Venice. The time is seventeenth century. The captured Italian is imprisoned in Istanbul. He is forced to reveal his past, his achievements in his life. He tells that he was trained as a doctor and he has a very good knowledge of science. The authorities now become enthusiastic to exploit the scientific talents of the captured. The Italian is asked to heal the sick people, from common man to the highest. Somehow, he succeeds in doing so. The pasha is pleased and is keen to exploit him further. The Italian is looked at as a representative of the West, a region known for the acquired knowledge. He is, therefore, handed over to a master named Hoja. Thus the novelist brings together the West and the East in the form of his central characters in order to explore the cultural implications arising from such a meeting. Both, Hoja and the Italian, gradually realize that there is something common between them. Each feels that he is the other’s double. Hoja’s character has many qualities which make the other attractive, and brings him closer and closer. Therefore, the Italian enjoys sharing his knowledge and experience with Hoja. The borderline between the master and the slave seem to get blurred as they continue to exchange their views. Hoja becomes more adamant to get every bit of knowledge from his counterpart. As they try to merge each other become one, a clear picture of the polarity between the West and the East emerges. West means science, and East seems to stand for rational ignorance. West also helps the other to see his image as in a mirror. This narcissistic quality of Hoja gets revealed as he moves on with his slave, with his insatiable thirst for knowledge. There is a quest in him to identify himself with the other. As they make attempts to accommodate each other, the readers feel that the two cultures are being yoked together for Hosha’s selfish advantage. The yearning to know the other compels Hoja to look at his own tradition. As he does so, the readers can realize that the borderline between East and West also implies a borderline between truth and reality. As the former demarcation tends to get blurred, the latter becomes clearer. Hoja now realizes that there are many things to be accomplished if he has to rise to the level of the West. So he decides to adopt whatever he can. It was at this precise time of his strong determination that he found his country struggling to escape from the grip of a severe epidemic. The whole nation was attacked by the deadly disease called plague. As Hoja was already in the good books of his Sultan, he could easily convince him of his ability to tackle the situation with the help and service of his slave. Hoja is great in weaving wonderful stories about himself, about his newly acquired scientific abilities. He learned from his slave that West succeeded in getting rid of diseases like plague by maintaining high standards of higienity. The rats are to be killed, for which the Sultan releases enough funds. A lot of cats are brought and they used to scare the rats away. Hoja’s tricks worked. The country returned to its original state. Hoja is now promoted as an Imperial Astrologer. Hoja’s obsession with the Western ways, the scientific ways, gradually multiplied. He started aiming for higher things. He now wants to make a deadly weapon. Here lies the novelist’s greatness in perceiving the logical and inevitable developments which science imposes on man. The master and the slave now work on designing and manufacturing a war engine. The Sultan backs Hoja and provides the necessary funds. It is well known that the possession of weapons automatically leads to temptations to launch war. Such occidental impulses have added many a war to Western history is a known fact. The newly acquired temptation finally ends up in a war between the Turks and the Poles. The war leads to an assault on a castle, a white castle, on the Carpathian Mountains. But as the success eludes Hoja, he decides to escape. “Pamuks novel brings to mind the view of Bernard Lewis, the historian of Islam, who has argued that the military failures of Ottoman Turkey in its invasion of Europe in the seventeenth century did indeed constitute the decisive catastrophic moment” (Berman). Hoja takes shelter from his Pasha by escaping to Venice. The end is ironical as well as thought provoking. But before the readers try to analyze the whole episodes, the realization comes that the whole story is an extension of the narrator’s typical fantasy. The borderline between reality and dream gets blurred as the cultural polarity between the west and the east becomes clearer. The theme of cross border culture and the crisis of identity have been the main subject of most of the Diaspora writers like Salman Rushdie. The new culture which an immigrant confronts has been something which inspires him to emulate it, but it also brings along with it the problem of identity. In the case of Hoja, it is the west intruding into his life in the form of the young scholar. The rational wisdom with which he comes is too much of a temptation for Hosha and the Pasha to ignore. As seen in Rushdie’s world, the clash of culture also leads to clash of tradition and modernity, as well as past and present. The past had its own peace, and the modernity cannot be constant. Knowledge is never stagnant as seen from the case of Hosha’s perpetual yearning for more and more knowledge. Many things are upset by the presence of the Italian scholar’s presence. He stands for the imported, against the local. Hoja’s past purity is corrupted by his association with him. His clash is also between the real verses the unreal. Yet, the unreal is inevitable. The intrusion of western culture is inevitable. The only question is now or then. In Culture across Borders, Tim Michell points out that even the Middle Eastern culinary culture is being affected with the addition of new ingredients borrowed from the west. But it has preserved its originality by assimilating the borrowed ingredients. He says, “Middle Eastern culinary culture, which added new ingredients and methods over time according to changing patterns of long distance trade, military conquests and trade relations, illustrates well how a cultural tradition can continually mix, borrow and replenish from elsewhere and yet remain unmistakably characteristic of a given geographic region” (Michell). In The White Castle, Hoja and his slave seem to go through a kind of experiment to see the consequence of mutual working between the East and the West, if not total merging of them into a new identity. Pamuk seems to believe that such experiments can only lead to disaster. The cultural polarities are so strong and binding on man that such attempts can only lead to the loss of both, particularly that of the East. By going back to several centuries, Pamuk could succeed in skillfully highlighting both the strength and weakness of each culture. The greatest argument seen in his novel is that modernity implies science and science implies temptations, which at the end is sure to bring gradual disintegration. The views continue to differ. Some feel that cultural difference has given place to cultural diversity. In countries like Britain and America several cultural groups live together, tolerating one another. However, writers like John McLeod are of the view that “Very little happens by way of cultural exchange, people cross back to their cells having had a brief, diversionary encounter with ‘cultural diversity’ “(McLeod, p. 228). Reference Berman, Paul. “La Maison Du Silence”. The New Republic, September 9, 1991, v205, n11, pp.36-39 http://www.orhanpamuk.net/articles/paulberman.htm McLeod, John. Beginning post colonialism, New York: Manchester University Press, 2000 Michell, Tim. “Culture across Borders”, Middle East Report, No. 159, Popular Culture Jul-Aug-1989) pp 4-6, 47. Read More