My Name is Other

In reading Pamuk’s My Name is Red this past week, I was struck by the recurring themes of the Other and alienation in the novel thus far. From the very beginning, with the corpse at the bottom of the well, Pamuk starts to instill the story with a sense of isolation. The corpse, Elegant Effendi, is trapped in limbo between the living world he remembers and the afterlife for which he yearns. He is alienated from his family and from the natural states of being. Esther, the Jewish woman, is a part of the mainstream culture, as illustrated by the way Black and Shekure embrace her. However, she lives in a ghetto and must wear a distinctive pink dress- these things mark her clearly as “Othered”. Some of the characters speak to the reader, like the dog, and yet speak to no character in the novel, which heightens the tone of solitude. Additionally, the form of the novel reinforces the theme of alienation. Pamuk divides up the story into chapters narrated solely by different characters, therefore the story must be told from a variety of points of view, each of which have their own “tunnel vision”. By this, I mean that each narrator has his or her own story to tell within the greater story of the novel. Furthermore, the narrators provide disparate points of view. For example, the corpse of Elegant curses his murderer and characterizes him as an immoral beast. But the following chapter, which is narrated by his murderer, informs the reader why the murderer feels that he had no choice but to kill Elegant, and gives insight to the guilt and heavy conscience he carries with him. Neither of these narrations can give the reader a full view of the story on their own, but combined, they provide a greater comprehension of the complexities of the situations at hand. The alienation of the characters form each other is somewhat resolved because of their union in the reader.