The White Castle adalah novel historis karya peraih nobel sastra 2006 – Orhan Pamuk yang berutur mengenai jati diri, pertentangan dan persahabatan antara seorang budak Italia dengan seorang cendekiawan Ottoman di abad ke 17.Kisah yang ditulis menurut sudut pandang pemuda Italia terpelajar sebagai narator (namanya tak pernah disebutkan hingga akhir) dalam kisah ini, diawali ketika ia sedang berlayar dari Venesia menuju Napoli. Di tengah perjalanan, kapalnya berpapasan dengan armada perompak Turki sehingga dirinya ditangkap dan dibawa ke Istanbul sebagai tawanan. Karena keahliannya dalam berbagai hal, termasuk mampu mengobati tawanan lainnya, ia mendapat perlakuan istimewa dibanding tahanan lainnya.Kabar tentang keahliannya menyembuhkan penyakit sampai ke telinga seorang Pasha yang meminta dirinya untuk menyembuhkan sang Pasha yang sedang sakit. Si pemuda Italia berhasil menyembuhkan sang Pasha, namun ia tetap seorang tawanan dan tinggal dalam penjara.Suatu saat si pemuda Italia kembali dipanggil ke Istana Pasha. Ia dipertemukan dengan seseorang yang biasa dipanggil oleh Pasha sebagai "Hoja" yang berarti "guru". Begitu terkejutnya si pemuda Italia karena orang yang dipangil Hoja itu sangat mirip dengan dirinya.Karena Pasha mendapat kabar bahwa si pemuda Italia adalah seorang cendekiawan yang mahir akan berbagai ilmu pengetahuan, ia ditugasi untuk membantu Hoja mempersiapkan pertunjukan kembang api yang megah untuk perayaan pernikahan Pasha. Setelah akhirnya pertunjukkan itu sukses si pemuda Italia kembali dimasukkan kedalam sel penjara.Beberapa hari kemudian si pemuda Italia kembali dipanggil oleh Pasha ke istananya. Pasha menawarkan pilihan hukuman mati atau kebebasan baginya asal ia bersedia menjadi seorang Muslim. Namun ia tak bersedia mengubah kepercayaannya walau harus mempertaruhkan kepalanya dihadapan algojo. Walau si pemuda Italia tetap tak bersedia menjadi seorang Mulsim, sang Pasha tak jadi menghukumnya, melainkan memberikannya pada Hoja untuk dijadikan seorang budak Sebagai budaknya, Hoja, sang cendekiawan Ottoman yang haus akan pengetahuan Barat, memerintahkan budaknya (pemuda Italia) untuk menurunkan segala pengetahuannya padanya. Dan mulailah si budak mengajarkan semua kepandaiannya dalam hal astronomi, kedokteran, teknik dll. Hoja menguras semua pengetahuan dan pengalaman hidup si budak. Lambat laun Hoja dan budaknya melakukan penelitian bersama-sama, menemukan bersama-sama, dan mengembangkan diri bersama-sama.Kebersamaan antara Hoja dan budaknya semakin intens, hingga akhirnya suatu pertanyaan filosofis keluar dari mulut Hoja. "Kenapa aku seperti ini?" Dari pertanyaan ini akhirnya mereka saling menulis tentang diri mereka sendiri termasuk dosa-dosa yang pernah mereka lakukan dalam hidup mereka. Dengan menulis tentang diri mereka masing-masing, mereka meyakini bahwa mereka bisa menemukan jati diri mereka yang sejati. Dilain pihak, kepandaian Hoja dan budaknya tak luput dari perhatian Sultan. Hoja diangkat menjadi peramal Istana. Dan mereka berdua diharuskan mengarang cerita ajaib, menjelaskan hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan sains, astronomi, astologi, menafsirkan mimpi Sultan, memerangi wabah mematikan, hingga merancang sebuah senjata mematikan untuk menaklukan musuh. di Istana Putih.Keterikatan antara Hoja dan budaknya semakin lekat, mereka saling berbagi kepandaian dan pengalaman hidup. Lambat laun mereka menjadi bingung akan jati diri mereka karena masing-masing memposisikan dirinya dengan ‘kembaran’ mereka hingga tertukarnya jati diri mereka. Hoja seolah menjadi si budak, si budak seolah menjadi Hoja. Puncak pertukarannya adalah ketika ternyata senjata yang mereka buat gagal menaklukan Istana Putih dan Hoja (atau si budak ?) pergi meninggalkan Turki.The White Castle (Beyaz Kale) adalah novel hisoris yang merupakan novel ketiga Orhan Pamuk yang diterbitkan pada tahun 1985 dan merupakan karya pertama Pamuk yang diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Inggris. Karya inilah yang menjadi awal ia bereksperimen dengan teknik postmodern, berubah total dari gaya naturalis di awal karyanya. Pada tahun 1990 novel ini diterjemahkan dengan sangat baik oleh Victoria Holbrrok sehingga banyak orang menyangka bahwa karya Pamuk ini memang aslinya ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris. Novel ini memenangi Hadiah Independen untuk Fiksi Asing pada 1990 di Inggris. Dalam edisi bahasa Indonesia, novel ini merupakan karya Pamuk kedua yang diterjemahkan oleh Penerbit Serambi, setelah sebelumnya menerbitkan My Name is Red (2006), dan kabarnya beberapa karya Pamuk lainnya termasuk yang paling anyar "Snow" kini sedang dipersiapkan untuk diterbitkan. Seperti yang menjadi ciri khas karya-karya Pamuk, The White Castle juga masih berkisar dengan tema kegamanangan atau hilangnya identitas yang antara lain diakibatkan oleh benturan antara nilai-nilai Barat dan Timur. Hal ini tampak pada tokoh Hoja dimana Hoja tampak begitu mengagumi pengetahuan dan budaya barat hingga ingin menguras habis semua ilmu yang ada di kepala budaknya (pemuda Italia).The White Castle memang bukan karya yang mudah untuk dicerna. Walau setting ceritanya menarik dan penokohan tokohnya kuat, namun novel yang minim dialog ini bias dibilang rumit karena sepanjang kisahnya mengupas soal kebingungan dan pertukaran jati diri antara tokoh Hoja dan budaknya. Bagi sebagian pembaca, pertukaran jati diri di sepanjang kisah yang diungkapkan secara unik ini mungkin saja menjadi bagian yang menarik, namun bagi pembaca yang kurang sabar untuk mencernanya bukan tak mungkin akan menemui kebingungan dalam memaknai novel ini.Namun yang pasti novel ini tampaknya membuat kita melakukan perenungan diri akan makna jati diri. Secara tidak disadari kita sering ingin menjadi orang lain, terlebih orang yang kita kagumi baik secara intelektual maupun secara pribadi. Namun pertanyaannya apakah menjalani kehidupan sebagai orang lain memang bisa membuat kita bahagia ?salam,h_tanzilhttp://bukuygkubaca.blogspot.com
To plunge into the abysmal recesses of one's memories is to enter a reality within realities. A parallel formless universe that silently resides inside one's mind that is directly proportional or reversely different from what they actually are. As the material form of the sensual world merges with the formless realm of the human consciousness, it recreates a reality in some other form that seems to belong in another dimension...For in truth, memories are but a combination of fact and fiction, both real and imaginary, transforming realities that can give definition to one's true reflection.Orhan Pamuk enters these unexplored regions of the human consciousness in The White Castle, exploring the unstable dimension of memories in search of the lost self that dwells inside its formless infinity, as it connects to the outward form of the entire finite physical world.The ambiguity of its theme is truly ambitious in its conciseness. It can be read fleetingly without giving any kind of impression or it can rekindle the fire of one's own enthusiasm for discovery that could be both painful, as well as exhilarating, as it magnifies the differences in all of us. At the same time, signifying the unseen identical aspects that are present in all of us. The complex structure of the story can only be attributed to its creator's own effort to find his true identity, that is, somehow lost in the sea of divergence that engulfs the world all over. ALLUDED DUALITIES: The East and The West, The Them versus The We and The Impenetrable Realm of The White CastleSet against the Ottoman Empire amidst the raging discord between Islam and Christianity which can be considered as an iconic representation of disparity between the East and the West, is the prominent theme of The White Castle. As it serves as a symbolic backdrop to the story of the two men from opposing poles, the enslaved Venetian scholar from the West and Hoja, his master from the Islamic East whose uncanny resemblance affected their lives to be mystically intertwined with their shared learnings, prompting them to the complexity of their fused identities and experimental self discovery, as they explode like two planets destined in a direct collision course, losing their original forms when they reach the pinnacle of their fusion, as the inevitable transformation occurs, leading to their eventual separation.As the union of the two men dominates the landscape of the novel, Pamuk ironically hinted the concept of detachment, apparent to Hoja's constant removal of himself from the others. As being a man of ambitious passion who yearns to reach for the ultimate "realization" and find the elusive answers to some mystic questions on identity, he distinguishes himself from the rest who he often referred to as the fools, for mere lack of sensitivity to know.For a short novel, it converges subject matters akin to the depth and breadth of what should be a heavier novel. The fusion of individualities, the isolated detachment from the rest and the ultimate quest for realization appear as the thematic key points that reverberate throughout. As perhaps, Pamuk is trying to illustrate the different pathways of man in search for the mystic answers, leading him towards the impenetrable interior of the unknown, symbolically represented by the unconquered presence of The White Castle. THE ULTIMATE QUESTION: Why I am What I am? The Journey to the Interior of SelfThe novel would reach its highest peak by the middle as the two men starts to disentangle their minds by recounting memories to find the ulterior truth inside their consciousness, sharing their innermost thoughts and dark kept secrets that moulded them into their present identities. It is a startling revelation of self discovery, a stunning example of human creativity, as it shows Pamuk's adeptness in human psychology, blending it with the age old mystic elemental forces that shroud what still remain as an enigma.Pamuk could have gone deeper into this thought and retain the momentum of the novel, but he opted to pursue another direction, leaving this thought unanswered. In the next half, it only slightly merges with the recurring theme of identity, losing the thread that should have already woven it to the Ultimate Truth.Perhaps, this is deliberate on the part of Pamuk, as it reflects the current ineptitude and inability of humanity to understand the Divine concepts that surround our identity. Just like Hoya, we tend to go outward, succumbing to the futility of our own ambitions, never realizing that the elusive truth just lies within us all.
What do You think about The White Castle (2000)?
Are we really so different from one another? Why am I not the magnificent white castle that sits on top of the hill but a rusty, creaking and nonsensical monstrosity wrought in hopes of "proving things to them", stuck in mud and sinking to its death with poor, accidental participants in it? Why can't I be you? If I knew who you were, where you come from and what you thought of while eating lunch with your family on an idle summer day of your youth? Are there really things to be found inside oneself ? Are they more real than things found outside? Does looking into oneself to find those things ever make that person happy?
—Chul-hyun Ahn
Well, this was unexpected. And, to be honest, I had no valid argument to expect what I expected, but still… Somehow I thought this would be a plot-based story or a novella focusing on a particular, specific event. Maybe the beginning just slightly reminded me of “Devil’s Yard” (I. Andrić). In the 17th century, after a pirate raid, a young Venetian intellectual is brought to Istanbul as a prisoner and begins living in a Hoca’s home shortly after that. The nature of his captivity though is not to be a servant or slave, but a scientific and scholarly exchange between the Hoca and the foreigner from the West. Apart from two or three breakpoints, that is about as much as there is to palpable events. Still, the novel is very dense and rich in substance, even to a point that it reads somewhat dragging and slowly, demanding high focus and attention. Believing himself surrounded by ignorants and idiots, the Hoca wants to learn about Western discoveries and achievement. He is vain and ill-tempered. The Venetian, the narrator of this story, is arrogant, holier-than-thou, pretentious. And that is quite a coup. Both of the protagonists are highly irritating and unlikable, thus preventing an emotional connection, an alliance between reader and character. The emphasis is on their interaction, their differences and the distance between them, their link as Doppelgänger and their pouring into each other. The motif of the identical twin represents their relation quite poignantly: How valuable and how safe is one’s own identity? What is identity at all? What makes you who you are and what would make you give that up? How is it possible you steadily flow into someone else? And when you realise a change occurring in you, do you hang on to what was previously there or do you let yourself glide with the new condition, trade places, become your own alter ego? And what if you can no longer tell yourself and your twin apart, but someone else still can? And maybe the most essential dilemma in this novel: For how long will you be able to distinguish with certainty that your own self is still yours and what your self was to begin with? This is not the first time that Pamuk tackles the question of identity. The matter of originality and canon in art in “My Name is Red” eventually comes down to identity as well. And the relation between East and West, Orient and Occident, is not a novelty either. But this time there is barely a broader context, the social, political, historical basis is merely a setting. If I was to visualise “The White Castle”, I could easily reduce it to a single scene of two people sitting in a dark, candle-lit room with the door and window-shutters closed. This definition, loss, trade and gain of identity is about as personal as it gets. And, interestingly enough, equally unemotional and detached.
—Jelena
Orhan Pamuk has won the Nobel Prize for literature and is supposed to be the premier man of letters in contemporary Turkey. However, I noted that more than one person on my friends' list on Goodreads was less than enthused with his books. Thus, instead of reading his more famous My Name is Red or Snow, I deliberately chose the slimmest volume on the shelf for my introduction--The White Castle--a mere 161 pages--yet this couldn't hold me even that far.Set in seventeenth century Turkey, it's the first person account of a Venetian captured and enslaved by the Turks. He comes to be owned by a master who is his physical double, who demands he teach him all he knows. Basically, what lost me was the style. And not because it was difficult or abstruse. Despite quotes comparing Pamuk to such writers as DeLillo, Borges, Nabokov and Proust, the prose in this novel is very simple--even simplistic. I never felt pulled in by the story or characters. The picture painted by the prose felt sketchy. There's very little dialogue, none of which is off-set. It's not so much a back and forth but rather a lot is reported or summarized. A lot of the events were summarized too rather than shown. Nothing made me feel a sense of time or place or characters in ways vivid enough to feel worth my time--so I stopped. And I think that's enough of Pamuk for me.
—Lisa (Harmonybites)
