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.
Contemporary World Literature
Thursday, December 20, 2012
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.
Monday, December 17, 2012
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.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
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.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Short Paper #2: "Two Tales of A City"
Amos Oz and Orhan Pamuk uniquely
personify the cities of Jerusalem and Istanbul underlining the melancholy that
exists under their beautiful carefree appearances. This idea is most prominent
in their respective biographies A Tale of
Love and Darkness and Istanbul:
Memories and the City, but it is also apparent in Amos Oz’s fictional novel
My Michael.
Both authors personify their cities
in such a way that they come alive with emotions of their own. We see the
cities as possessing a deep seeded melancholy that they cast as a shadow upon
their inhabitants. Pamuk describes this melancholy in great detail in Istanbul calling it “Hüzün”. He
tells the reader to “understand hüzün not as the melancholy of a solitary
person but the black mood shared by millions of people together” (p. 92) and
goes on to speak of the hüzün of the entire city of Istanbul. Oz expresses a
similar idea in A Tale of Love and
Darkness when he says, “In Jerusalem people always walked rather like
mourners at funerals, or latecomers at a concert” (p. 7). Oz implies here that
there is a mood of melancholy that encompasses the entire city.
Both authors also agree on where this
melancholy originates from and why it is present in their cities. Pamuk
establishes the origin of the melancholy very simply when he says, “the
melancholy of this dying culture was all around us” (p. 29). He goes on to say
that the city of Istanbul is caught “between tradition and western culture” (p.
115) and divided “along the lines of its many ethnic groups” (p. 115). Pamuk
identifies the melancholy of Istanbul as originating from the dying of
Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire and the emergence of Istanbul and the
Turkish Empire. His reasoning for why this transition resulted in melancholy is
the fact that the people in the city live among the ruins of Byzantium. He says
“The people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins” (p.
101) and in his opinion this has a melancholic effect on the people. Pamuk also
quotes the famous writer Gautier saying that, “It is difficult to believe there
is a living city behind the dead ramparts!” (p. 231).
In a similar way Oz draws up the
repeated conquest of Jerusalem as the origin of its melancholy when he says,
“The city has been destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed, and rebuilt again. Conqueror
after conqueror has come, ruled for a while, left behind a few walls and
towers, some cracks in the stone, a handful of potsherds and documents, and
disappeared” (p. 27). In Oz’s opinion it
is the city itself that is responsible for this repeated shift in power. He
personifies the city saying, “Jerusalem is an old nymphomaniac who squeezes
lover after lover to death before shrugging him off her with a yawn, a black
widow who devours her mates while they are still in her” (p. 27). It is clear
that Oz, like Pamuk, believes that the melancholy of his city is due to the
long history of war, destruction, and drastic cultural upheaval.
Oz and Pamuk both highlight the
melancholy of their cities, but they also identify that this melancholy is
hidden from the view of unattached tourists. Pamuk quotes a western author as
saying, “Istanbul which has some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, is
like a theater and best seen from the hall, avoiding the poverty stricken and
sometimes filthy neighborhoods in the wings” (p. 222). This particular Western
author had become acquainted enough with the city to identify the melancholy
within. However, he chose to pretend not to see it, so that he could enjoy the
simply beauties of the city that most tourists experience. Pamuk also
identifies the contrast between those who see the city realistically and those
who only see the surface beauty when he says that he often finds himself in
greater agreement with “western observes [who] speak ill of the city” (p. 237),
than with those who are “forever going on about Istanbul’s beauty, strangeness,
and wondrous uniqueness” (p. 237).
Oz express this idea of beauty and
melancholy coexisting in one city by having one of his fictional character say
in My Michael that, “Jerusalem is the
biggest city in the world. As soon as you cross two or three streets you are in
a different continent, a different generation, even a different climate” (p.
219). This statement was brought about by the characters comparison of the
beauty of a Saturday outing in a park to the gloom of their daily lives within
the heart of the city streets. Oz
further explores this idea in his biography, A Tale of Love and Darkness, when he says that “The Jerusalem [his]
parents looked up to lay far from the area where [they] lived” (p. 3). He
describes the city as having two distinct realities. One reality was of the
poverty and hardships, in which he lived. The other reality he describes when
he says “Over the hills and far way, the city of Tel Aviv was [] an exciting
place, from which came the newspapers, rumors of theater, opera, ballet, and
cabaret, as well as modern art, party politics, echoes of stormy debates, and
indistinct snatches of gossip” (p. 6). It is clear that Oz sees the beauty and
excitement that visitors to Jerusalem’s tourist areas would experience as well
as the melancholy that is imbedded within the people’s daily lives.
As we have seen through the
biographies and novels of Amos Oz and Orhan Pamuk, the cities of Jerusalem and
Istanbul can be uniquely personify by underlining the melancholy that exists beneath
their beautiful carefree appearances.
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