Snow Essay Questions

In what ways might Blue be viewed as a conflicted or contradictory character? How do his internal conflicts tie into the message of the novel as a whole?

Blue is a central character of the novel, representing the text's most distilled and clear picture of a modern Islamist in Turkey. As such, he is a spiritual leader, referred to as "the Master" by his disciples, as well as a mentor of many young Turkish Muslim boys. At the same time, however, there are many elements of his personal and professional life that detract from this image. For one, despite being an almost clerical figure revered by the religious sectarians of Kars, he is a sinner himself that is involved in several premarital relationships with women like Ipek and Kadife. Moreover, while the media paints him as a regressive fundamentalist, Blue actually has the outward appearance of a Westernized Turk, if not a European entirely. Finally, as we have discussed elsewhere, while Blue rejects the Orientalist perspective of the Western media and fights back against the Westernizing impulse of the Turkish government, he is also rather casual in his treatment of Westerners, often casting them into stereotyped roles similar to those he fights against himself. Moreover, his attempts to get a statement out about the suicides in Kars rely on Western help and intervention.

Each of these conflicted drives within Blue point to the novel's larger acceptance of internal conflicts both within society and within individuals. After all, Blue's failure to adhere perfectly to religious ideals, as well as his ultimate failure to save himself by placing too much trust in Ka, colors his character more deeply and gives the impression that he is a real person, just like Ka or Ipek, who also act against their own interests at times. Moreover, by showing us the ways in which Blue falls victim to the same stereotyping impulses as those he fights, we see that ideologies of factionalism play into a vicious cycle that ultimately victimizes real people. Important also is the fact that we are meant to see Blue as both a sympathetic and selfish character, just as we are with Ka. Ultimately, this conveys the novel's central philosophy that, despite the inevitability of conflict and tension within one's self and communities, such conflict is not to be accepted as normal, since it comes at the cost of many real people's happiness. Even in Turkey, where national identity is ill-defined (reflected in the tension between Blue's outward appearance and popular reputation), one must not get bogged down in pointless divisions that plunge people into deeper desperation and poverty.

How is the image of snow significant throughout the novel? What are some different valences taken on by the image?

In Snow, the image of the titular precipitation takes on a series of diverse meanings. First, it is important to understand that binding all of these valances together is a sense that snow is a kind of divinely inspired unifying force. This is seen not just in Ka's reading of divinity into the image of snow's silence, but also in the fact that there is a symbolic correspondence between Ka's own name, the Turkish word for snow (Kar), and the location in which the novel is set (Kars). This is also seen in the fact that Ka makes use of the snowflake as a map for the hidden geometry of human lives in his final poetry collection.

Ka's poetic experience and artistic mind supply a large proportion of the meanings that snow takes on throughout the text. For example, at the beginning of the novel, as Ka first journeys to Kars, he relays his childhood understanding of snow as a purifying and naive force in nature. Soon after, however, as he comes to understand that there are many literal and figurative skeletons buried beneath the snow, the image of snow as obfuscater and complicator emerges. Later, as Kars becomes sealed off from the rest of the world under a blanket of snow, Ka comes to see snow also as a great isolator. At the same time, Ka also realizes that, as the snow buries everything above ground, a certain kind of horizontality, equality, and intimacy is established. Snow is both that which throws things into great relief and that which makes things so indistinct as to join them together entirely. This idea of snow as ambivalent and all-encompassing then reaches its apotheosis in Ka's aforementioned poetic use of the snow image. In Ka's imagination, snow is the perfect embodiment of the tensions within and between human beings. Though each human being, like a snowflake, has their own unique soul and ambitions, they fall only for a brief time and are virtually indistinguishable from other snowflakes when viewed from a distance. In sum, then, snow is developed throughout the text to have a great variety of contradictory and interpenetrating meanings, just as human life encompasses a wide range of complex thoughts, behaviors, and loyalties.

How does Snow explore the relationship between artistic imagination and reality?

Though it is not as readily apparent as the political implications of the novel, Snow is also deeply preoccupied with the collisions between artistry and reality, as well as the key ways in which art can influence and connect with reality. Regarding the former, Ka's artistic imagination is presented throughout the text as fundamentally in conflict with the real status of the world around him. When Ka witnesses poverty and desolation, for example, he is only able to journalistically document, or else distance himself from it completely (sometimes even stopping mid-conversation or mid-excursion) to sit and write a poem down. Moreover, though many of Ka's actions in the text have dramatic effects on the community around him (e.g., organizing the meeting at the Hotel Asia, betraying Blue), Ka is completely indifferent to these effects, instead focusing on his own personal happiness and fulfillment derived from these actions (i.e., getting to spend more time with Ipek).

Sunay Zaim's treatment of art then provides a counterpoint to the view of art that we see in Ka. There is a part of Sunay that may be said to be in line with Ka—that is, the part of him that is rather indifferent to the effects of his art on the common people (e.g., his relative indifference to the violence that takes place during the coup). However, this part of him is dwarfed by the part of Sunay that sees great potential to link the artistic and real worlds. In his understanding, history and theater are linked by the fact that both are meant to be seized by the bold, who can, in turn, make one shape the other. Moreover, Sunay believes, it is by making theater that links people together as witnesses to real drama that art can become not only realistic, but rather hyperrealistic or mythic. For example, when Sunay stages the coup and suspends the normal state of affairs in Kars, though sectarian violence is fueled, he at the same time is drawing people together in fear, isolation, and hope. Additionally, when real violence is perpetrated during Sunay's plays (once during the coup and again during his assassination), it forces the real world to reckon with the artistic and aesthetic worlds that Sunay explores. Where Ka was fundamentally apolitical in his art, Sunay is bent on producing art with political consequences—together, then, the two represent conflicting approaches to the relationship between art and reality, each of which leaves something to be desired (seen in the fact that both are killed).

In what ways does Snow challenge our conventional notions of what feminism is or represents?

Snow is also deeply preoccupied with feminism and the ways in which women's problems are overlooked by multiple systems of politics and culture. This is primarily explored through the character of Kadife, a firebrand and fiercely independent woman that is nonetheless deeply devoted to the Islamic faith. First, in her decision to wear the headscarf in the first place, we see that Kadife is more moved by the real concerns of the women around her than any abstract ideals of what femininity is supposed to be or is entitled to. She does not cherish her so-called "freedom" as a Westernized woman, nor does she feel particularly that her religious faith or dignity rely on her wearing a head covering: rather, she sees the plight of her sisters and wants to help them carry their social, spiritual, and emotional burdens. Second, consider how, when talking to Sunay during the second play that he stages, she directly calls out the hypocrisy of the secular government that attempts to "protect" and "empower" women through their scorning of religion. Finally, it is not just the secularists whom she challenges: even in her relationship with Blue, a religious fundamentalist, she qualifies his faith and draws it into the realistic grounding of the material through the vehicle of their physical passion and intimacy (which flies in the face of his strict religious ideals). Thus, rather than trying to fit feminism into any existing schema or force it into an idealism of its own kind, Pamuk shows us in Snow that feminism has material stakes and concerns that both contravene and are interstitial to those of the major oppressor-oppressed relationship of Kars and the Turkish government.

How does the narrative frame of Snow tie into the novel's central philosophy regarding journalistic and artistic representation?

Though Ka is the novel's protagonist, he is not its narrator: rather, the narrator is Orhan, a third-person narrator who tries to recollect some of the historiography and poetry of Ka after his death in Frankfurt 4 years after the events related in the novel. On the one hand, the fact of the narrator's similarity to the real writers—seen in their shared name as well as the shared name of their two daughters (i.e., Rüya)—seems to lend a certain veracity to the novel's content and convince readers that the events related therein are entirely true and reliable. On the other hand, the conversations between Orhan and Fazil—as well as some of the discussion between Ka and Blue—in the novel challenge this idea, conveying the idea that a third-party who is not involved in the events related will never be able to reconstruct or represent them fairly for others. While we have already seen the way in which Blue is acutely aware of possible Orientalist frames into which Western readers will try to shoehorn the events in Kars, in the case of Fazil's words to Orhan, we get a larger sense that one's status as an outsider to Kars necessarily bars them from understanding it. Where a native of Kars would see real people who struggle to get by, a third party may see someone pitiable and impoverished—a caricature of a human being. In sum, then, the narrative frame of the novel cements for readers the fundamentally problematic nature of journalistic and artistic representation, especially when the artist or journalist is considered an outsider to the events or people they are depicting.