A Continued Look on Character and Place (Short Paper 2)

A characteristic of contemporary literature is the question of identity: its frailty, resilience and interchangeability. To have an identity is to be an individual, a differentiated complete person with self-perception. However, individuals are also irreversible connected to others in vertical relationships (between parents and children) and horizontal, reversible relationships with spouses and friends. Additionally, individuals can be connected to geographical contexts that do not conform to vertical or horizontal associations. The link between character and place, at least in contemporary literature, ranges from the permanent to transient and overall suggests the development of identity and character. Places - cities, countries, houses - can reflect, amplify, and forecast characters' hopes and choices.  The interchangeability of characters and their respective places is suggested in the three books, Omeros, Istanbul: Memories and the City, and The White Castle.

Orhan Pamuk's autobiography, Istanbul: Memories and the City, outlines the historical narrative of Istanbul, consequently providing a subtle sketch of Pamuk's own life. He identifies with the city's ebb and flow of historical richnesss, suffering and "disorder [that] resists classification" (169). Pamuk cannot help but to  resonate with Istanbul and its melancholic ruins, writers, steam ships and cobbled streets: "for anything we say about the city's essence says more about our own lives and our own states of mind. The city has no center other than ourselves" (349). He sees the rapidly changing landscape of Istanbul and feels that "this city, like my soul, is fast becoming an empty - truly empty - place" (317).The narratives on Istanbul are intricately connected to Pamuk's life, if not a reflection of his "inner turmoil" (358). The two entities are interchangeable, and perhaps even identical. The city amplifies Pamuk's inner melancholy; he represents Istanbul in one discrete individual package.

But despite the resonance with Istanbul's melancholy, Pamuk realizes that the despair within the city will inevitably infect him: "its melancholy begins to seep into me and from me into it, I begin to think there's nothing I can do; like the city, I belong to the living dead" (317). He abhors the mix of Eastern and Western, traditional and European influences that are making the city into an ugly hybrid. He writes that Istanbul is "indeed a city moving westward, but it's still not changing as fast as it talks...Everything is half formed, shoddy, and soiled" (319). Pamuk must distance himself from the quiet and heavy melancholy of the city - from himself - as he converses with his mother on his future. He senses her "constant entreaties to 'be normal, ordinary, like other people' " to be stifling; Pamuk knows that he must ultimately "resist the broken-down, humble, melancholy life that Istanbul was offering" although it is more painless and comfortable to do so (358). Because Pamuk knows Istanbul's historical melancholy intimately, he can conscientiously identify with the city, choosing to detach himself from the safe and stagnant mundaneness of Istanbul and become a writer.

Pamuk's novel, The White Castle, also relates identification with place, in this case the ancient city of Constantinople. An Italian scholar is taken captive and forced to be a slave to Hoja, or master, who is his doppelganger. As the narrator shares his life stories with Hoja - who he is, how he has become who he is - the pair form a charged love-hate relationship. The narrator must prove his courage by writing why he is who he is, but Hoja continually says that "anyone could write things like this" and doubts its raw human authenticity (61). Later on, the narrator is able to persuade Hoja into the same "activity" which proves to be enlightening: "Thus in the space of two months I learned more about his life than I'd been able to learn in eleven years" (63). Furthermore, he encourages him to write down every inconsequential detail as he "sensed then that [he] would later adopt [Hoja's] manner and his life-story as [his] own" (63). Perhaps he stirs him on through the meticulous remembrance because he wanted to "master" his language and "turn of mind" as it were his own story (63).

As the characters become knowledgeable about the other, they become each other's confidante and friend, blurring the lines of individuality like an "ant [who] patiently carries his shadow around on his back like a twin" (49). Through their knowledge of each other's place, in this case family, culture, country, childhood in addition to the geographical place, they discover that their identities are not so unique after all. The narrator calls Hoja his "real self" and feels indignantly separated from him during a parade celebrating the end of the plague: "It wasn't that I wished to seize a share in the triumph...I should be by his side, I was Hoja's very self! I had become separated from my real self and was seeing myself from the outside" (98). In The White Castle, two characters switch physical places successfully swapping identities, implying a deep and inseparable link between identity and place as exchanging places produces an identification switch.

Derek Walcott's epic poem Omeros contains many story lines, combining them within rich layers of history and context to create a palimpsest of stories. One of the stories is of Helen, an island beauty, who is in a triangle relationship with Achille and Hector. Walcott effectively uses Helen's characterization as also a description of St. Lucia's recent changes. Just as St. Lucia has had a history of harsh colonialism and has experienced abrupt modernizations, Helen vacillates between Achille and Hector depending on her mood . Because of the island's burden of rapid modernization pressures, Helen abandons her values just as St. Lucia lost its local traditions to keep up with the world: "She was selling herself like the island, without/any pain, and the village did not seem to care/that it was dying in its change, the way it whored/away a simple life" (111). Major Plunkett realizes that Helen was tempting him in the same way that the Caribbean islands may have been as abundant and desirable to the empires that conquered it. In essence, "the island was Helen,/and how it darkened the deep humiliation/he suffered for her and the lemon frock" (103). Similarly, the loss of land and self (Helen) is seen in North America with the colonization of Native American land. As the narrator views the flat expanses of the Midwest, he remembers the contracts between the natives and the colonists: "Our contracts/were torn like the clouds, like treaties with the Indians,/but with mutual treachery" (175). He mourns for "a land that was lost" and consequently, also "a woman who was gone" just like Helen's downfall (175).

The link between character and place in contemporary literature can outline the development of character identity and growth. Specifically, it can help clarify the similarity and thus the interchangeability of the characters with their respective places. The characters' progress in the course of the stories can be charted by following descriptions of cities, such as Istanbul, or countries, like St. Lucia. In Omeros, Istanbul: Memories and the City, and The White Castle the interchangeability of characters and their respective places is suggested by expository narratives on non-characters.