LANGUAGE OF BELONGING vs. LANGUAGE OF EXPLORATION: PAMUK’S SNOW AND ITS IDENTITIES IN FLUX

Snow must have a peculiar place within Orhan Pamuk’s bibliography due to two obvious reasons: the first is the novel’s courageous attempt to depict some of the deep and underlying socio-political problems through some deliberately provocative characters with challenging arguments. The next reason, in a strong connection with the first, is the variety of the reactions to Snow, most of which erroneously read the novel symbolically or allegorically. I argue that Snow, as a novel that questions and challenges dichotomies of identity, does not lend itself to any symbolic or allegorical reading. On the contrary, the novel first contrasts the parts of seemingly irreconcilable dichotomies, and then turns each part into its opposite through its complex plot structure. This becomes the novel’s way of questioning and challenging boundaries based on any narrative of unitary collective identity