Theme of White Castle by Orhan Pamuk

421 Words2 Pages
The dynamic of the slave-master relationship is a recurring theme throughout the White Castle. Hoja, the master, tries to assume superiority over the narrator several times throughout the story, whether by ridiculing him for his childhood, or for his weakness and paranoia as a slave. However, Hoja spends just as much time trying to learn from the Narrator, and frustrated at the narrator when he withholds knowledge from him. The slave-master dynamic continues to deteriorate when the two realize they are able to switch identities. The power of knowledge is another major theme in The White Castle. The Narrator and Hoja are both seen as intellectuals. However, while neither can truly claim that they know more than the other at first, the narrator's knowledge is contemporary, and more scientifically sound than Hoja's, which is filtered through another language, and then filtered again through dogma. The models of the heliocentric and geocentric universes also come to represent the two men and their views on the world. The narrator sees and uses his knowledge as a way to help whereas Hoja uses his knowledge to move his own ambitions forward. The modernization, or rather, the failure to, of the Ottoman Empire is hinted at throughout the story, before becoming a major symbol during the climax. The failure of The Ottoman Empire, and its modern counterparts, such as Turkey, to modernize along with its rivals is a common conflict and theme throughout Pamuk's work. The failure of the Ottomans to capture Dobbio is described by narrator as their failure to attain something pure, perfect. Ambiguity of self is a major conflict for the narrator. When the narrator first meets Hoja, Hoja looks as he did, or at least believes he looked, having not seen his reflection in some time. Hoja also realizes this, and as the two men learn more about each other, the realization that Hoja could
Open Document