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.