The White Castle First Half

The novel goes by fast while reading, however it is among the most confusing novels I have ever read.

To work down the tiers of the structure of the novel, the novel was originally written by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Victoria Holbrook and copy-righted in 1990. Orhan Pamuk is a relatively young author for the amount of international esteem he has gathered, including his winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The next element the common reader inspects and sometimes skips is the preface. The preface, as defined by dictionary.com, is “a preliminary statement in a book by the book’s author or editor, setting forth its purpose and scope, expressing acknowledgment of assistance from others, etc”.  Given this common context, it is reasonable to assume that the preface may have been written by the author, editor or translator. Additional support for this assumption lays in the opening sentence of the preface “I found this manuscript in 1982 in that forgotten ‘archive’ attached to the governor’s office in Gebze that I used to rummage through for a week each summer, at the bottom of a dusty chest stuffed to overflowing with imperial decrees, title deeds, court registers and tax rolls” (9). However, no editor is listed in the credits. In fact, aside from acting as the ‘signature’ at the end of the preface, the name Faruk Darvinglu appears no other place in the novel.

The preface is written in Darvinglu’s first person, yet it appears to be written also from the point of view of the novel’s overall editor, publisher or author, as evidenced by the closing thought “So I decided…to publish the story which I returned to read over and over again” (11). Given the evidence of the preface, therefore, it becomes clear that the novel and preface both contain inconsistencies.

At first I gave thought to the possibility Darvinglu being a pen-name, and so I looked up his name on the internet and discovered nothing. Then I came to consider the possibility of the writer of the preface of the novel being the fictional author of the bulk of the novel; the unnamed narrator’s person. The conclusion I have reached thus far is that the narrator of the preface is a fictional character and thus a part of the novel overall, the narrator and voice of the preface a character of Pamuk’s creation. 

If this is truly the case, as perhaps reading the remainder of the novel will reveal, then the novel is such as a novel within a novel, voice within a voice is concerned. If this is the case, the seemingly orientalist characteristics of the Muslim and Turkish characters of the novel could be, perhaps, a social commentary from Pamuk of how the narrator/translator Darvinglu would see the tale in ‘modern’ ideals.

Perhaps this explanation would also reveal the reasons for the seemingly crazy antics of the core novel’s narrator and main characters. I look for this explanation because thus far the message of the novel, the overall theme is a mystery to me. Themes exist, no doubt, however personally I fail to see the connection and relevance to the actions of the characters. For example, what is holding the narrator in his slavery for so long? He is not chained, abused, or locked up. His ‘master’ pays him no mind for long periods of time while he is off on his ramblings. What is the significance of his ‘master’ looking like his double?  Could his master possibly be himself? 

I hope the remainder of the novel reveals these secretes to me.