The White Castle (Orhan Pamuk)

We all love to think that every single one of us is special, unique. But are we? The egocentric assumption is challenged again and again in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle. At least that’s the vibe I was catching on.

At first glance, I assumed that it’s just another tale of adventure with historical background thingy--a genre which seems to be popular these days. Just look at the synopsis: An unfortunate Italian was captured, taken to the Ottoman Empire as a slave, and bought by a guy who looked exactly like him; they soon developed an unusual relationship because the master insisted that the slave taught him everything that he knew and cooperated with him (the master) in creating some ingenious inventions and deciphering the Emperor’s dreams. Well, it’s not. If your take on adventure is limited to those of Sinbads’ or Indiana Jones’, you definitely will not perceive The White Castle as a tale of adventure because the real drama happened within the character, not in the circumstances that they’re facing throughout the story.

Take the master, for example. He’s a really obnoxious guy who was full of himself, who sincerely believed that everybody else was stupid, who loved prying into people’s “dark” secrets. As I read the story, I realized that he took pleasure at looking down at people because it emphasized just how different he was from everybody else. The thought that he was remotely similar to others greatly infuriated him. Like the time when he tried to extract confessions of sins from his slave and townspeople and found out that the worst that they could offer were little lies and covetous instinct he would get angry--probably because their “sins” weren’t dissimilar from his--and torture them until they confessed something more sinister, more dramatic.

It’s creepy how I can relate to the characters. How I enjoy celebrity gossips--featuring their flaws--now and then, how I fancy put forth all my knowledge like some kind of expert when I’m really not, how I think highly of myself while labeling others “ignorant”.

Although the last sentences of the story were somewhat neutral, Peaches and cherries served on a pearl embedded platter... The nearly seventy-year old me who was sitting behind the table... A bird perching on the edge of the well between olive and cherry trees, I felt agony in each word. The agony of someone who, despite living a comfortable life, was not the person that everyone thought he was, living a dull life just like everybody else even though he was an “individual” who was “different” from them, and was just waiting death to come. Or was it me who was in agony realizing this?

Note: Thanks to Shofi for the book.