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.