Echoes of an Autobiography - my thoughts

When I first started reading Echoes of an Autobiography by Naguib Mahfouz I hated it. Well actually I still am not a huge fan. However, I did come to realize that like the other biographies that we read for this class the biography itself has something to show us about the writer and it gives us an insight into the fictional work that we read by him. At first I failed to see any connections and was just annoyed by the fact that the book does not flow like it should, but instead randomly jumps around. Then I realized that the style of writing and the overall oddity of the work reminded me of something else we read this semester; Arabian Nights and Days also by Naguib Mahfouz. I was finally able to come to the conclusion that although I did not like this work there was nothing wrong with it. It was not bad it was just different from what I was use to. I had to expand my horizons of what I consider good literature to be to have an open mind about it. There is a uniqueness and beauty to Mahfouz’s writing which one can easily miss if you focus to much on how odd it is or on what you think it should be. I think it is important to realize that writers do not write what their audience wants them to write; or rather they should not do so. Instead they write what they want their reader to get out of their writing. Writing is a personal expression and if I do not like it I do not have to read it, but that does not in any way diminish the fact that the work itself is very well done. Overall although I disliked the work I can see why Dr. Zoller decided to include it in the course and I believe it was beneficial in its own way. 

White Castle Response Paper

One theme that I saw repeated throughout Orhan Pamuk’s novel White Castle was the idea that the things that what people says affect how we view ourselves and how we think in general. The narrator’s views of himself and his views on religion and life are drastically changed from the beginning of the novel to the end and this is mostly a result of Hoja’s influence on him. I intend to briefly outline the change that occurs in the narrator from the beginning of the novel to the end and then focus in on some of the key circumstances that brought about this change.

            When the Turks first take the narrator captive he dreams about going home to his family and his finance and he is very adamantly against changing his religion to Islam to appease his captors or even to save his life. Near the beginning of the novel the pasha tries to force the narrator to convert to Islam even going as far as to take him out into the woods and put his head on a block and threaten to execute him if he will not convert. Still the narrator remains firm and does not give in to the threats. He is also a loyal servant to Hoja with the hopes that Hoja will set him free and let him return to his family if the narrator does everything that Hoja asks him to do. About midway through the novel we see the narrator give up his dream to go home to his family and finance and accept that his life is now tied to the city of Istanbul and to Hoja. This slack in resolve ultimately leads to the individual we see at the end of the novel who willingly steps into Hoja’s shoes, adopting his life, his job and his religion; allowing Hoja to claim his own identity and return to his family.

            There are three main events that occur in the novel which I feel are significant to the shift that occurs in the narrators perspectives are; (1) the plague, (2) the mirror, (3) the failure of the weapon. Before the plague happened the narrator was still convinced that he would be set free and get to return to his own land, but the plague showed him how absurd that dream was. The narrator says, “I was dreaming that he [Hoja] would set me free without even grumbling, thinking of how I would write books about my adventures among the Turks when I returned to my country“ (p. 70). However he continues the paragraph by saying “The news he [Hoja] brought me one morning suddenly changed all that. Plague had broken out in the city!” (p. 70).  Along with disrupting daily life and killing the dreams that the narrator had at that time of when and why Hoja would release him from slavery the Plague also revealed something to the narrator about himself and about his interactions with Hoja. Through the experience of Hoja attempting to teach the narrator fearlessness the narrator realizes that Hoja has no intention of releasing him. He fluctuates between scared and hopeful that Hoja is going to die of the plague and this set of mixed emotions leads him to runaway. This is the first time we see the change in the narrator’s views, because when he runs he does not try to run home he accepts that he now lives among the Turks and only runs to an island. One can see how this change in the narrator’s perspective is a result of the things that Hoja said to him and the influence that these things had on the narrator.

            The second event actually occurs during the time period between the plague breaking out in the city and the narrator running away. Right before the narrator runs away Hoja comes home complaining of a pustule on his abdomen. He takes off his shirt and makes the narrator do the same and forces him to stand in front of the mirror with him. He then acknowledges for the first time the striking similarity between the narrator and himself. He starts talking nonsense about the two of them switching places and about him dying and such. The narrator is scared and basically just freezes up until Hoja finally releases him. He then says, “despite the intensity of my fear, although I believed I’d just seen things about myself I’d never noticed before, I somehow could not shake off the feeling that it was all a game” (p. 83). Once again one can see how Hoja’s words and actions drastically effect how the narrator views himself.

            The last and most final shift we see in the narrator’s view of himself is when Hoja’s weapon fails in battle and Hoja trades places with his slave and leaves the country so that they both can live. At this point the narrator steps into the shoes of his master and begins to live his life. By the end of the book it is clear that the narrator basically sees himself as Hoja now. He has a hard time separating who he was from who he has become. He acknowledges that this shift happened because he was seduced by Hoja’s stories.

            There are many other examples from the novel of circumstances that had an impact on how the narrator viewed himself. However, it is easy for one to see from just these three examples that Hoja’s words and actions drastically effected how the narrator view himself. 

A Tale of Love and Darkness Response Paper

Amos Oz’s autobiography entitled A Tale of Love and Darkness contains a theme that really jumped out to me. This theme was the theme of the importance and relevance of words, specifically written words, to our daily lives. I specifically found this theme moving, because of how many people think that my field of study (English Literature) is worthless.

            In A Tale of Love and Darkness Oz says, “I loved the way Teacher Zelda placed one word next to another. Sometimes she would put an ordinary, everyday word next to another word that was also quite ordinary, and all of a sudden, simply because they were next to each other, two ordinary words that did not normally stand next to each other, a sort of electric spark jumped between them and took my breath away” (p. 292). I love the way that Oz describes this relationship between words. I think that it is true with any literary work. They are all comprised of words that on their own are just normal every day words with normal meanings, but when you place them together they create something magical. This is similar with the way life works. Life is not about the amazing unbelievable things; it’s about the ordinary things that come together to make something extraordinary.

            My favorite quote comes from a passage where Oz describes his teacher’s words as coming alive based on their meanings. He says, “In a story about snow, the writing itself seemed to be formed of icy words. In a story about fires, the words themselves blazed. And what a strange, hypnotic sweetness there was in her tales about all sorts of miraculous deeds! As though the writer had dipped his pen in wine: the words reeled and staggered in your mouth”(p. 294). I found this metaphor to be extremely profound, because Oz is spot on in the respect that words are suppose to represent something. When we read words that describe a scene, a smell, a noise or a texture our senses should come alive. We should be able to see, smell, hear or touch the things being described. The words should literally bring them to life. I think that the power of words is often under estimated in today’s society where communication and access to unbelievable amounts of “literature” is easy. I found it refreshing that Oz does not take the importance of words and literature for granted.

            I also liked how Oz portrayed the fact that books could transport the reader to a different place. That they could help them experience things that they could not experience in reality and would help them escape the fear and pressures of daily life. Oz talks about the feelings of the people in Jerusalem during his childhood saying that, “books were the slender lifeline that attached [their] submarine to the outside world” (p. 298). During this time there was much conflict and it was hard for the people to remember anything besides this fear and violence, so books were there outlet to remember things like forests and meadows and peaceful cottages. Oz also says “In those years, as I said, I hoped I would grow up to be a book. Not a writer but a book. And that was from fear” (p. 298). Here Oz is acknowledging that books were his escape from the hardships and fear of daily life. They were the one place that he felt safe. Oz also touches on this theme of being able to lose ourselves in literature when he is describing his teacher Zelda reading to the class and going over the time that the lesson should have already been over. He describes the children as “leaning forward on [their] desks so as not to miss a word” and describes an impatient mother who would come and stand at the door and then get lost in the story as well. She would become transported away by the story and temporarily forget all the pressing things that she had to do which had caused her initial impatience.

            In conclusion, I was fascinated by the way that Oz put my thoughts on words into words in chapter 37 of his autobiography A Tale of Love and Darkness. I am not sure I have ever heard someone do a better job of portraying the overlooked importance of words and literature in our daily lives. 

Istanbul Response Paper

If one reads Orhan Pamuk’s autobiography Istanbul: Memories and the City it is easy to make connections between Pamuk’s personal life and the plot and characters of his fictional novel White Castle. It is not difficult to see how Pamuk’s past experiences have influenced his writing. There were three main ideas from Istanbul: Memories and the City, which jumped out to me as being connections with White Castle; (1) The Other Orhan, (2) An Easterner and a Westerner switching places, and (3) using art as a coping device,

            The most obvious connection between Pamuk’s personal life and White Castle appears in the very first chapter of Istanbul: Memories and the City where Pamuk tells us that “from a very young age, [he] suspected there was more to [his] world than [he] could see” (p. 3) he believed that “somewhere in the streets of Istanbul, in a house resembling [his] there lived another Orhan so much like [him] that [he] could pass for [his] twin” (p. 3). This idea clearly links to the scene in White Castle where the narrator meets Hoja. The narrator says, “The resemblance between myself and the man who entered the room was incredible! It was me there…for that first instant this was what I thought. It was as if someone wanted to play a trick on me and had brought me in again by a door directly opposite the one I had first come through” (p. 22). The idea of another Orhan existing in another house somewhere in Istanbul is basically just the imagination of a young boy going wild. However, Pamuk brings this illusion to life in vivid details in White Castle through the relationship of the narrator and Hoja.  

            The relationship between the narrator of White Castle and Hoja leads us directly into the second connection between the two literary works. Although it does not directly involve himself, Pamuk mentions in his memoir that “Among the imagined books was a novel called “Harel Bey,” in which a civilized Westerner and an eastern barbarian slowly come to resemble each other, finally changing places” (p. 287).  It is likely tat this idea gave Pamuk the inspiration to write the end of White Castle where the narrator and Hoja switch places after the failure of their weapon and begin to live each other’s lives. These first two connections also seem to connect to each other. Pamuk appears to have some fascination with the concept of having a doppelganger.

            The third connection also involves the narrator of White Castle and Hoja. However, instead of dealing with the similarities of their appearances the third connection deals with their relationship itself and their interactions with each other. I found a connection between their relationship and the relationship between Orhan and his older brother. Orhan describes his relationship with his brother by saying that “between the ages of six and ten, [he] fought with [his] older brother incessantly, as time went on the beatings to which he subjected [him] grew more and more violent” (p. 294). The descriptions that Orhan gives of these beatings are very similar to the description of how Hoja treats his slave. The narrator discusses it saying, Hoja “would become even more angry, intensifying the cruel treatment he had already let go beyond bounds…he began to beat me outright…[he’d] bring his fist down upon my back with a vehemence that was only half in jest; once or twice, unable to control himself, he slapped me in the face” (p. 66). This connection was interesting, because it not only shows where Pamuk got the idea to have Hoja beat his slave from, but it also gives you deeper understanding into the way Pamuk felt about his relationship with his older brother. If his reaction to these beatings was to write a novel about a master who beats his slave it is likely that Pamuk himself felt powerless to stand up to his brother similarly to how the narrator in White Castle is powerless to stand up to Hoja.

             There are countless other small connections between Pamuk’s biography Istanbul: Memories and the City and his fictional novel White Castle, however, these three examples give us a taste of how influential Pamuk’s personal life was in his fictional writing.