Turkish Identity (Nationalism)
Modern Turkish society is heterogenous in its religious, cultural, historical, and political composition. In Snow, then, Orhan Pamuk tries to tease out the more nuanced contours of Turkish national identity and the character of the Turkish people. Looking back on the history of Turkey, Pamuk not only traces threads of Turkish identity back to the ancient Turkic nomadic culture (for example, when Blue cites the Iranian Shahnameh as a lost story of what may be considered the modern Turkish people), but also to the cultural milieu of the Ottoman era—itself a complex synthesis of elements from the Byzantine, Christian, and Arab-Persian Muslim civilizations. Moreover, in Kars specifically, Pamuk touches on the distinct Armenian and Russian histories that unfolded alongside these aforementioned cultural threads. However, as Pamuk shows us by pointing to Atatürk's republicanism as the breaking point for many Turkish dissidents, the Turkish thought of the second part of the 19th century and onward leaned heavily on Western ideas and trends. Some saw this as an advent of modernity, while others saw it as absurdity and thoughtless imitation of the West. It is only fitting, then, that when a Westernized intellectual author (Pamuk in real life or Ka in the novel) attempts to show the true flaws of Turkish life and Turkish identity, they are lambasted by both sides and unable to find compromise among the various factions as they depict the fraught everyday realities of Turkish people. Even when retelling something close to life, local Turks are unwilling to let someone who is outside their hyperlocal group depict them, as we see with Fazil's distrust of Orhan's novel. Finally, it is somewhat ironic that, even when someone attempts to put together an unbiased or third-party picture of what happens in Turkey, it is somewhat fruitless—after all, many of the locals in Snow tell Orhan that they are not interested in the work he is doing on Ka, and Ka's presence in the book is auxiliary at best to the major events of the novel such as the coup and the suicides. Such disasters and tragedies are endemic to the divisions that define Turkish society, and one person's attempt to stand in as a mediator are doomed to fail.
Life and Death (Suicide and Faith)
As Ka journeys to the city of Kars, we are told at the novel's very beginning that the city has witnessed a suicide epidemic among religious teenage girls. The young girls were not allowed to enter universities and other educational institutions with a headscarf on: while such garb had been a part of their culture, faith, and life in general for generations, the government had come to see the headscarf as a symbol of political Islamism, and as a secular institution, they banned it. Though this conflict in the minds of the city's young women seems to be a perfectly acceptable explanation for most people regarding their suicides, Ka discovers that matters are not so simple. The girls all had killed themselves rather abruptly, without any ceremony or pretext, just after completing their daily routines. Additionally, the girl's parents did not notice anything that would have disturbed or troubled their children so much, which makes the suicides even more chilling. Finally, as Ka realizes throughout the novel, a truly devout person would not be moved to suicide at all, since suicide is the ultimate sin in Islam and shows a lack of faith in the basic tenets of the religion. Ultimately, then, what we discover about life and death in Kars comes greatly from Kadife's mouth. In her second performance, she tells us that women commit suicide not out of lack of confidence or lost faith, but rather to assert their power and pride in their destitution as women. Because the conditions of their lives are so wretched and limited on account of their womanhood, their only chance to reclaim the dignity in their lives is to choose when this life ends for themselves. In Snow, then, we are shown the ways in which life and death themselves have been made political in an attempt to implicate broader social structures (e.g., nationalism, religion), even if the truth is much more essential. The suicides are after all the fault of Kars society, but not in the way that is popularly understood.
Individualism and Religion
One of the key tensions explored in the novel is what it means to be part of a collective, particularly in a religious context. Ka comes to Kars with little faith in the divine, but after meeting with such figures like Sheikh Effendi and seeing the majesty of the snow in Kars, he attempts to develop an individualistic faith that does not rely on being in community with others. Blue, however, attempts to shame Ka for this belief, saying that it comes out of European arrogance and disdain for the poverty of those in the religious community. Moreover, Blue asserts, it is not poverty that makes people a religious community but rather poverty which makes people want to understand more about life and get closer to God, which brings them together in a religious community. Pamuk's stance, as it would seem, falls somewhere in the middle. Against Ka's bourgeois sensibilities and ideas of individual faith, we see the selfish actions he takes and the ways in which he hurts others in pursuit of his own happiness. Meanwhile, against Blue's idea of religious community, blind faith is shown as largely mistaken and able to amplify conflicts and pain when a community is led astray or into unnecessary conflicts.
Orientalism
Though it is mentioned by name only once in the text (on page 248, when Ka and Blue are having their conversation about Hans Hansen), Orientalism is a key theme explored by Pamuk in Snow. With its basis in Edward Said's foundational 1978 text of the same name, Orientalism describes a series of beliefs and practices by which the West projects a fictitious and exotic picture of "the East" (i.e., the "Orient") in order to subjugate and control it. Of course, such a picture produced by Westerners to denigrate and exaggerate Eastern ways of life and thinking are not necessarily reflective of the material and ideological reality of the places being discussed. This idea of Orientalism clearly maps to the central divisions in the text, particularly the secular/Islamist division. While the secular government paints people like Blue as terrorists simply on account of their faith and religious zeal, Blue endeavors to show that such a picture is not only hypocritical and wrong, but also itself an act of violence on behalf of the Westernized Turkish government. This is why, in order to legitimate his beliefs, Blue attempts to find a sympathetic Western paper to publish his statement (so that the West-leaning Turkish state will listen to them and take action). The exploration of Orientalism in the text does not stop there, however. In figures like Fazil and Necip's treatment of literature, we see also the way in which aesthetic endeavors can become politicized within an Orientalist framework. In the case of Necip's Islamic science fiction, he anticipates that the Orientalist academy and literary establishment will see him as a minor writer at best. In Fazil's reaction to Orhan, too, we see his belief that an intellectual, Westernized author will misrepresent the lives of the people who live in Kars as poor and pitiable. In sum, then, Pamuk presents Orientalism as perhaps the true villain of Snow, a key force that drives the internal division of Turkey as it separates into Westernized factions and more Eastern factions that stand in opposition to Western modernity.
Gender and Women's Rights
Somewhat parallel to Pamuk's exploration of Orientalism in Snow is his interrogation of the relationship between men and women. Throughout the text, one thing that Pamuk is keen to establish is that women are one of the central binding agents of Turkish society. As Funda Eser tells Ka after Sunay Zaim describes the masochistic strain in many jobless and dissolute Turkish men (i.e., losing themselves in television; voting for the most regressive candidates), all men in Turkey are supported by their wives, who raise their children and manage all the affairs of the household. Out of sheer love for these women and their shame at not being able to do better for their women, such men beat their wives, which in turn lead the women to be unhappy. Here, we see not only the importance of women in Turkish society but also their use as a punching bag and scapegoat for men's own psychological complexes and issues. This exact phenomenon is also touched on by Kadife, who insists that the issue of the headscarf is simply another way to use women as a vehicle to air larger issues. It is not so much about oppressing women or keeping women safe by giving them the choice to wear a head covering, but rather it is about secularism against religious fundamentalism, as well as authority versus insurgency. Just as the East is made out as a scapegoat and villain in Orientalist thought, so too are the women of Kars put on the battlefield of different factions and ideologies so that men can once again assert their own dominance and vie with one another for their own security and happiness. It is in standing up to this idea that Kadife defies all norms for women in Kars and bares her head on stage, and it is also in this spirit that she kills Sunay Zaim, whose entire aspiration was to bridge the theatrical and the political, deliberately inflaming people's ill-will and emotions through theater. In short, then, Snow shows us the limitations of non-feminist secular and religious ideology, taking us to the hypothetical places such ideologies may take us if not controlled and reformed.
The Power and Limits of Art
Another central theme of Snow concerns the power and limitations of art. On the side of art's influence, we see not only Serdar's writing (which moves the citizens of Kars to think and, in some cases, act in different ways) but also Sunay Zaim's drama, which aspires to make myth out of art and create theater which transcends the fictional and enters the historical. In this latter vein, we also have Orhan's novel about Ka, which in retracing (fictional) historical events and fleshing them out in the context of the novel's material reality (i.e., the fact that it exists in the real world as the novel Snow), attempts to narrate or write history into reality. At the same time, however, Pamuk also uses his text to show us how art can be limited in its pursuit of higher goals and aspirations. After all, Ka's attempt to divine the secrets of human life and experience (i.e., his Kars poems and the geometry of his snowflake diagram) are fruitless and result in not only his death, but also the disappearance of his work. Moreover, while Sunay's second play in Kars is a great success, it results in his death. Finally, in the case of Sunay's old acting career, we see how political and religious activism mires the true meaning of art and leads to its discrediting. In sum, then, Snow teaches us about the great power unfettered art has on emotions and memory, and shows us that when art intentionally tries to incorporate things like the political, it can come at the cost of the art itself or artist themself.
Poverty and Class Difference
One final element that is omnipresent in Snow is poverty and stark expressions of class difference. While Ka's memories of Istanbul display vast wealth and privilege, his peripatetic wanderings through Kars reveal destitute corner after destitute corner. This overwhelming poverty in Kars leads many of the city residents to wander around purposelessly in coffeehouses, or else get caught up in political, religious, or intelligence operations. As we have already seen, poverty can make someone want more from life and unite with others in service of finding a happier life for themselves, but this inherent collectivist lean and community dependence of the impoverished also puts them in opposition to the bourgeois ideals of the Westernized Turkish intellectuals and aristocrats. As a kind of liminal character, an in-between of Europeans and true Easterners, then, Ka is an exceptionally interesting case when confronted with poverty because it both disgusts and energizes him. When in Kars, he worries for his safety and pities the poor in a condescending way, but upon returning to a more individualistic and bourgeois place (i.e., Germany), he sees it as gloomy and counterproductive to his own happiness. It seems that only in the shadow of poverty is Ka able to scrape together his love affair with Ipek, and this is in no doubt partly due to Ka's reliance on and openness to others when put in an impoverished city.
