July\'s People Snow the Recurrent

¶ … July's People

Snow

The recurrent theme of elusive happiness that is observable in Orhan Pamuk's Snow is intimately tied to the nature of the novel's protagonist. Ka is returning to his native town and his native country for the first time in a dozen years, having been exiled to Germany for all of that time for political reasons. Throughout all of the episodes of the novel, no matter how convoluted and fragmented the overall plot becomes, Ka is shown to be completely torn between two competing worlds -- worlds that are even competing in the snowbound town of Ka in which the primary action of the novel is set. The reason that happiness is so elusive to Ka is that he has no way of defining happiness, and no real method for achieving it -- he is a conglomeration of, or a competition between, different definitions and different methods. The East meets West perspective is perhaps overly simplistic, but it is the mixture as well as the changing of cultures that prevents happiness from truly being found in the novel.

In the chapter of the novel where Ka is first reunited with Ipek, this dichotomy of cultures and the tension created by changing and developing cultures that is at work in Ka's character is referenced both explicitly in symbolically. At the very beginning of the chapter, the narrator compares Ka to Turgenev, saying that he "too had tired of his own country's backwardness, only to find himself gazing back with love and longing after a move to Europe" (Pamuk 31). This shows the direct conflict that Ka feels regarding his identity and his draw to Turkey and his village. Ipek in many ways stands as a symbol of the attraction and familiarity that this land provides for Ka, but at the same time it is a land that exiled him and that he has come to think of us "backwards" and beneath him in many ways.

This fact seems to spell out doom for his romance with Ipek right from the beginning, and it is only strengthened by another image that appears soon after. Ka and Ipek go through several awkward phases of a conversation and arrive at a new closeness with each other after discussing the deaths and burials of their mothers (one of the many instances of mirroring or doubling in the book). Following this, they begin talking about the pastry shop in which they were sitting, which "had been an Orthodox church until 1967, when the door had been removed" and taken to a museum regarding the Armenian massacre -- which, Ipek points out, tells the story of how Turks were massacred by Armenians rather than the other way around (Pamuk 32). This is a twinned image of cultural change, in the removal of the door and the conversion of a church into a pastry shop, and of the violence that intercultural clashes can bring in the evocation not only of the Armenian massacre, but a direct reference to the differing histories regarding this incident.

It might seem as though there simply can be no happiness where there is no agreement; the clashes within and around Ka in Kars -- and in Turkey, perhaps in the world -- that stem from his changing and changed cultural perspectives will not allow him to find a static place of happiness. This could be true, or it could be that Ka simply won't let himself be at peace with the paradox and uncertainty that attends his cultural position. He continually allows the conversation to be steered to such observations, and notes many similar facts regarding violence in the changing culture himself -- it is one of the reasons he is in Kars.

July's People

Though not actually about the end of the world in any large-scale sense, Nadine Gordimer's July's People truly is a type of post-apocalyptic tale for two of its primary characters. Maureen and Bam Smale are forced to live in the village of their black former servant, July, following a hypothetical and violent end of apartheid that has left militant black revolutionaries in charge of Johannesburg and the South African government. For the Smale's, this essentially proves to be the complete end of their world. They are unable to return to their lives or even their homes in Johannesburg; that world certainly no longer exists, and would be mortally dangerous to them. At the same time, however, they are completely impotent and unnecessary in July's village; they have no function, no purpose, and are generally regarded with suspicion and fear that they will bring trouble to the villagers. These are the things that, as they become increasingly apparent, drive Maureen to such a point of desperation that she is willing to chase after salvation or death as though they were the same thing.

One obvious and deeply graphic scene that depicts the progression of this desperation in the novel is that in which Bam and Maureen make love, wrestling amongst their children "and the nightly intimacy of cockroaches, crickets and mice feeling-out the darkness of the hut; of the sleeping settlement; of the bush" (Gordimer 80). This is the first time that the couple has had sexual contact in the novel, but even so the animal nature of their passion is already indicative of the desperation of their situation. The hedonism of this scene and of the meat eating scene that comes immediately before it are matched for a reason -- this is a symbolic last gorging before the rest of the downhill slide takes place.