SYNOPSIS & ANALYSIS OF ORHAN PAMUK’S SNOW

By:
Zainul Mujahid & Supeno

A. Synopsis

Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged

poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing this
place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented by news of
strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among girls forbidden to wear
their head scarves at school. An apparent thaw of his writer's curiosity leads him to
Kars, a far-off town near the Russian border and the epicentre of the suicides.
No sooner has he arrived, however, than we discover that Ka's motivations are
not purely journalistic; for in Kars, once a province of Ottoman and then Russian
glory, now a cultural gray-zone of poverty and paralysis, there is also Ipek, a radiant
friend of Ka's youth, lately divorced, whom he has never forgotten. As a snowstorm,
the fiercest in memory, descends on the town and seals it off from the modern,
westernized world that has always been Ka's frame of reference, he finds himself
drawn in unexpected directions: not only headlong toward the unknowable Ipek and
the desperate hope for love–or at least a wife–that she embodies, but also into the
maelstrom of a military coup staged to restrain the local Islamist radicals, and even
toward God, whose existence Ka has never before allowed himself to contemplate. In
this surreal confluence of emotion and spectacle, Ka begins to tap his dormant
creative powers, producing poem after poem in untimely, irresistible bursts of
inspiration. But not until the snows have melted and the political violence has run its
bloody course will Ka discover the fate of his bid to seize a last chance for happiness.
Ka reunites with a woman named İpek, whom he once had feelings for, whose
father runs the hotel he is staying in. İpek is divorced from Muhtar, partly due to
Muhtar's newfound interest in political Islam. In a café, the pair witness a shooting of
the local director of the Institute of Education by a Muslim extremist from out of town
who blames the director for the death of a young woman named Teslime, claiming she

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 1

killed herself because of the director's ban on head-scarves in school. After the
incident, Ka visits Muhtar, who tells him about his experience of finding Islam, which
relates to a blizzard and meeting a charismatic sheikh named Saadettin Efendi. The
police pick up Ka and Muhtar due to the killing of the minister. Ka is questioned and
Muhtar is beaten.
Though he has suffered from writer's block for a number of years, Ka
suddenly feels inspired and composes a poem called "Snow", which describes a
mystic experience. Other poems follow. At İpek's suggestion, Ka goes to see Sheikh
Saadettin and confesses that he associates religion with a backwardness that he does
not want himself or Turkey to fall into. But he feels a sense of comfort with the
Sheikh and begins to accept his new poems as gifts from God.
Other significant characters Ka encounters include a wanted Muslim radical
named Blue and İpek's younger sister Kadife, who has joined and become the leader
of the "head-scarf girls", those who insist upon being "covered." Through Kadife, he
meets another head-scarf girl, Hande, who suggested suicide to Teslime but insists she
did not intend for the girl to follow through. Throughout the book, the act of insisting
upon wearing a head-scarf, which places these girls in a head-on collision with the
state authorities and entails enormous pressures and sacrifices, is described as an act
of empowerment and assertion of their identity as women; in one passage, Ka refers to
them as "Islamic Feminists".
Ka is impressed by Necip, a student at the religious high school, who, like
many of the young Muslims at the school, is quite taken by Kadife. The narrator lets
the reader know that Necip will die soon. Growing tensions between secularists and
Islamists explode during a televised event at the National Theater, during which one
secular group puts on a classic play condemning head scarves. When Muslims protest,
three nationalists take the stage and start firing. Necip is among those killed. The
police and military establish martial law, and Ka is taken in for questioning because
he has been seen with Islamists. He is shattered to find Necip's body in the morgue
and identifies him as the one who led him to Blue.
Ka is taken to meet Sunay Zaim, an actor whose group put on the play at the
National Theater and who is now orchestrating the round-ups and investigations of
suspicious persons. Sunay is a staunch Turkish Republican, who had often played

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 2

with great conviction revolutionaries and dictators such as Robespierre, Napoleon and
Lenin, but whose dream to play Attaturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, was
frustrated. As the snow has made the roads and railroads impassable, no outside
authorities are able to intervene in the coup. The isolation of Kars and Sunay's old
friendship with the senior military officer left in charge of the local garrison enabled
him to become a revolotionary dictator in real life as well as on the stage, for at least a
few days - his act being simultaneously a coup d’etat and a coup de theatre.
Ka is then taken by Kadife to speak with Blue, who is Kadife's lover. Ka
convinces Blue that he has a contact at a newspaper in Germany who will be willing
to print a statement denouncing the coup if Blue can get support from non-Islamists.
To further this fiction, Ka returns to his hotel to convince Kadife and Ipek's leftist
father Turgut Bey to collaborate on the statement. After the father and Kadife leave,
Ka's longing for İpek is fulfilled when the two make love.
Turgut Bey attends a meeting at which representatives from the various
factions opposed to the coup, including Islamists, leftists, and Kurds, attempt
comically to produce a coherent statement to the European press denouncing the
action. After Blue is arrested and held by the nationalists, Ka negotiates a deal with
Sunay Zaim that will result in Blue's release but only if Kadife agrees to play a role in
Zaim's production of Thomas Kys’s and The Spanish Tragedy and remove her head-
scarf on live television during the course of the play. Both Kadife and Blue agree.
Ka is soon picked up and beaten by two policemen who are trying to keep tabs
on Blue. He is also given the devastating news that Ipek was Blue's mistress during
her marriage to Muhtar and still keeps in contact with him. Ipek confesses the affair
and further indicates that Kadife only got involved with Blue out of envy. Ka's
jealousy is intense and the two fall asleep after weeping together. She still believes
that they can go to Frankfurt and be happy, and he eventually comes around to
believing it again too. However, before they can leave he must convince Kadife to not
take her head-scarf off during the play as both Ipek and Turgut Bey have become very
concerned at the possible reaction of the students from the religious school. Despite
Ka's urging, Kadife insists upon uncovering herself during the performance.
After a scene in which Ka is seen confused and tormented by feelings of pain
and jealousy, the narrative describing events from his point of view abruptly breaks

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off. The narrator explains that Ka had left behind a detailed account of his acts and
feelings while in Kars, but that there was no reference to his last hours in the city, and
it is left to his friend Orhan to try to reconstruct these by following in Ka's footsteps,
visiting the places where he had been and meeting the people he had met.
Ka's actions immediately after leaving the theater remain a mystery which is
never completely untangled. Orhan is, however, able to establish that Ka was later
taken by the military to the train station, where he was put on the first train scheduled
to leave now that the routes from the town are open again. Ka complied but sent
soldiers to retrieve İpek for him. However, just as İpek is saying her farewells to her
father, news arrives that Blue and Hande have been shot. İpek is shattered and blames
Ka for leading the police to Blue's hideout. Instead of going to Ka, she and her father
go to the theater to see Kadife.
The novel's narrator then describes events at the theater as if he has
reconstructed them from various sources. Kadife and Zaim have an on-stage
discussion about suicide and the different reasons why men and women kill
themselves. A garret and noose are set up, and Zaim hands Kadife a gun after he
demonstrates that it is not loaded. When Kadife shoots Zaim much of the audience
assumes his death is staged, and even Kadife appears to be surprised that the gun is in
fact loaded. Zaim had clearly prepared and orchestrated his own death on stage,
"pushing art to its farthest limits" and preferring to die at the peak of his theatrical and
political career. Soon afterwords, as the snow has subsided, Ka's train departs and
local authorities enter the town to stifle the coup and restore order.
Years later, the narrator goes to Kars to uncover details on Ka's story. He
meets with many of the principals, including Kadife, who served very little time for
what was ruled an accidental homicide and is now married to a student from the
religious school. Meeting Ipek, the narrator himself falls deeply in love with her and
becomes intensely jealous of his dead friend (and of the dead Blue). In his talk with
İpek he tells her that Ka was a shattered man who never forgot about İpek but was
prevented from returning to Kars due to a warrant for his arrest. İpek is still convinced
that Ka betrayed Blue. Indeed, the narrator soon finds evidence that suggests that Ka
went back to talk to the police after his visit to the theater and probably told them

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 4

where to find Blue. İpek has remained unmarried, does not expect to ever find love
again, and devotes herself to her nephew.
In the end it is disclosed that a new group of Islamic militants was formed by
younger followers of Blue who had been forced into exile in Germany and based
themselves in Berlin, vowing to take revenge for the death of their admired leader. It
is assumed that one of them had assassinated Ka and taken away the only extant copy
of the poems he had written in Kars. Thus, while much is told about the names of
these poems, their themes and the circumstances under which each was written, the
poems themselves are lost.

B. Analysis
After reading Pamuk’s Snow thoroughly, we catch that the author alertly
mixes various events that make the story alive and of course unique. It is alive since
the scene is full of critical dialogues that make us as the readers as if got involved in
it. Meanwhile, the uniqueness can be obviously seen through the changing topic of
dialogues, such as Islam (fundamentalism), secularism, God, love, and art. Pamuk is
to us very smart in organizing the serious dialogues into mischievous wit by
empowering irony where according to Sisk and Sanders (1972: 228):
Bitter irony uses the same devices as satire – sarcasm, invective,
understatement or exaggeration, mockery, ridicule, paradox. … expresses
human frailties and evil by methods that emphasize the reversal or topsy-turpy
differences between aspiration and reality, aim and fulfillment, self-portrait
and mirror image.

An amazing flow of dialogues on Islamic teachings, secularity, sincerity,

conscience, and the like between the young fundamentalist boy - Vahit Suzme - and
Professor Nuri Yilmaz - the director of the Institute of Education - make us conscious
that the sate policy, in this case Turkey (Ankara), is very powerful and must be
followed by all provinces including Kars where the story takes place. The Professor
whose religion is Islam is illustrated by Orhan Pamuk as having no strong principle.
He tends to follow secular mainstream by banning and barring headscarf girls from
schools as well as classrooms “We live in a secular state. It’s the secular state that has
banned covered girls, from schools as well as classrooms” (Pamuk, 43), eventhough
he has a good understanding on the Holy Kuran verses, for example when he

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pronounces the translation/content of the Thirty-First Verse. The debates between
both the young boy who takes two days on snow and stormy roads from Tokat to Kars
and the Professor are getting ‘hotter’ eventhough some of the conversations run
smoothly and slowly but irritating or might be said as attacking.
The Professor’s answers to Vahit Suzme’s questions never bring satisfaction
for the Professor frequently launches irrational arguments, such as when Suzme asks
“Ezcuse me, sir. May I ask you a question? Can a law imposed by the state cancel out
God’s law?”, the Professor answers “That’s very good question. But in secular state
these matters are separate” (Pamuk, 43). More questions are asked by the young boy
but no satisfying answers “ … Does the word secular mean godless”, “What’s more
important, a decree from Ankara or a decree from God?” (Pamuk, 44). During the
dialogues ironies are played nicely by Pamuk where eventhough the young boy really
hates the Professor, he mockingly kisses the Professor’s hand by saying: “That’s
another good straight answer, sir. May I kiss your hand? Please, sir, don’t be afraid.
Give me your hand. Give me your hand and watch how lovingly I kiss it. Oh, God be
praised. Thank you. Now you know how much respect I have for you. May I ask you
another question, sir?” (Pamuk, 43); “That’s an excellent answer, sir. Allow me to
kiss your hand. But how can you equate the hand of a thief with the honor of our
women?” These utterances are considered humorous because of the meeting of
congruity and incongruity in the dialogues of both young boy and Professor, as
theoretically stated by McGhee (1979: 6-8):
The notions of congruity and incongruity refer to the relationship between
components of an object, event, idea, social expectation, and so forth. When
the arrangement of the constituent elements of an event is incompatible with
the normal or expected pattern, the event is perceived as incongruous. The
incongruity disappears only when the pattern is seen to be meaningful or
compatible in a previously overlooked way. This discovery has long been
considered to be important for humor, in that the nonsense that results from
the perception of incongruity makes sense when we see the unexpected
meaning or “get the point”

To better understand the ideas in the novel, we make use of a New Historicist
Approach. New Historicism states that a literary text should be seen as a product of its
“time, place and circumstances of its composition rather than as an isolated creation
(Wikipedia, a) or elaborately, most fundamentally, there is an insistence that all

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 6

systems of thought, all phenomena, all institutions, all works of art, all literary texts
must be situated within a historical perspectives. In other words, texts or phenomena
cannot be somehow torn from history and analyzed in isolation, outside the historical
process. They are determined in both their form and content by their specific
historical circumstances, their specific situation in time and place (Habib, 2005: 760)
New Historicist also argues that “text not only represent culturally constructed forms
of knowledge and authority but actually instantiate or reproduce in readers the very
practices and codes they embody” (Cadzow, 2005). Since there are several items as
mentioned above that must be situated in historical perspectives. We in this limited
discussion try to investigate the historical background and the condition of women.

1. Historical Background
The discussion of different ideas and ideologies present in Snow reflects the
political choices Turkey currently has to make as the first predominantly Muslim
country to apply for membership in the European Union. On the one hand, many
people in Turkey and Europe hope that traditional Turkish membership will force
Turkey to implement reforms that could make the country “a model of democracy for
the rest of the Middle East” (Wikipedia, b). On the other hand, several European
countries have expressed concerns about allowing predominantly Muslim country into
secular Europe. To better understand this hopes and concerns one needs to briefly
consider the long history of interaction between the East and the West.
At first, after Mohammad established Islam in the 7th century, a dramatic
expansion took place, largely at the expense of Christianity, until the Islamic
dominance ended with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I
(Wikipedia, c). By September 18, 1922 the new Turkish state was established. On
November 1, the newly founded parliament formally abolished the Sultanate, thus
ending 623 years of Ottoman rule and the Republic was officially proclaimed on
October 29th, 1923 in the new capital of Ankara (Wikipedia, b).
Mustafa Kemal became the republic’s first President of Turkey and
subsequently introduced many radical reforms with the aim of founding a new secular
republic from the remnants of its Ottoman past. According to the Law on Family

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 7

Names, the Turkish parliament presented Mustafa Kemal with the honorific name
“Ataturk” (Father of the Turks) in 1934.
Snow is set mainly in the city Kars in the northeast of Turkey. According to
Wikipedia, it belonged to an Armenian Kingdom in the 10th century, and was later
captured by Turks, Mongols and by Timur. It then came under Ottoman rule until
1878, when it was transferred to the Russians. After the subjugation to Russia, many
Muslims emigrated to Turkey, but at the same time many Greeks, Armenian and
Russians migrated to the city. In the 1918 the Turks took back control for a year until
Armenia with the support of British troops took it back in 1919. In 1920, Kars was
again ceded to Turkey. The government of Armenia does not to this day recognize the
current border (Wikipedia, d). Traces of Kars turbulent past are also present in the
novel, especially in the description of different houses (Pamuk, 7, 164).
Turkey is a secular state with no official state religion. The Turkish
constitution provides for freedom of religion and conscience. The role of religion has
been controversial debate over the years since the formation of Islamist parties.
Turkey was founded upon a strict secular constitution which forbids the influence of
any religion, including Islam. There are sensitive issues, such as the fact that the
wearing of Hijab is banned in universities and public or government buildings as
some view it as a symbol of Islam – though there have been efforts to lift the ban
(Wikipedia, d).
In Pamuk’s Snow, it is clearly described that the notions of modernity and
secularization (westernization) are in line with the aim and efforts of the Turkish
authority to make radical reform by avoiding religious symbols. It can be seen
through: “ … The culture of the Russians brought to Kars now fit perfectly with the
Republic’s westernizing project” … “Kars would dance the latest dances as pianos,
accordions, and clarinets were played in the open air. In the summer time, girls could
wear short-sleeved dresses and ride bicycles through the city without being bothered”
(Pamuk, 22). Meanwhile, on the other side, underestimation to head scarf girls
happens. To the westernized upper-middle class circles of the young Ka’s Istambul, “
… a covered women would have been someone who had come in from the suburbs –
from the Kartal vineyards, say – to sell grapes. Or she might be the milkman’s wife or
someone else from the lower classes” (Pamuk, 35).

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 Snow exposes the social and historical atmosphere in Turkey, especially Kars.
The understanding of historical perspectives before or after reading the novel will
make us comprehend the content. Therefore, according Habib (2005: 760) “literature
must be read within the brother context of its culture, in the context of other
discourses ranging over politics, religion, and aesthetics, as well as its economic
context.”

2. The Condition of the Women

As shown, religious fundamentalism, whether democratically elected or not,
does not look attractive if one is concerned about the situation for out-groups like
women. Oppression of women is evident through out Snow. Already in the beginning
of the novel we are informed that one of the reasons why Ka travels to Kars, is the
epidemic of suicides among young Muslim women (Pamuk, 8). During Ka’s
investigations into the suicides he learns that they all happen quite abruptly,
something that disturbs him more than hearing about the “constant beatings to which
the girls were subjected, or the insensitivity of fathers who wouldn’t even let them go
outside, or the constant surveillance of jealous husbands” (Pamuk, 14). However,
although the hardships the girls had to endure contributed to their decisions to commit
suicide, they alone can not explain the sudden epidemic. That is to say, as the deputy
governor points out to Ka, that if the sole reason was that the girls were unhappy, then
“half the women will be killing themselves” (Pamuk, 17).
According to Amnesty international the deputy governor might be right in his
estimate that half the women in Turkey have reasons to consider suicide. In a report
published by Amnesty International in 2004, Amnesty states that women in Turkey
are discriminated in every area of life. Moreover, the report claims that over half of
the women in Turkey were married without their consent. The report also presents
many documented cases of women “who are beaten, raped, and in some cases even
killed or forced to commit suicide” (Amenesty, 2004).
Yet the oppression suffered by women in a patriarchal society is, as stated, not
seen as the main reason for the girls’ suicides. Instead the idea that suicide might
spread contagiously has taken hold (Pamuk, 15). The man who murders the Director
of the Institute of Education also suggests that at least one of the girls committed

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 9

suicide for mainly religious reasons (Pamuk, 42 - 52). Before the director is murdered,
the director offers a more prosaic explanation for the girl’s suicide; she had had an
affair with a policeman, and she killed herself when she learned that the policemen
was married (Pamuk, 46).
Interestingly, another of the head scarf girls, Hande, also explains that she
does not want to remove her head scarf out of the fear of becoming a woman that
“can’t stop thinking about sex” (Pamuk, 132). The executioner of the Director
mentioned earlier, seems to agree with her. If Turkey continues to push the Turkish
women in Europe degraded in the wake of the sexual revolution (Pamuk, 45), he asks,
and also wanders if that would not turn Turkish men into pimps. Obviously,
headscarves have a lot to do with suppressing women’s sexuality, either to protect
them from degradation, as the executor suggests, or, to protect men’s honor in
cultures where preservation of honor refers to “maintenance of virginity of unattached
women and to the exclusive monogamy of the remainder” (Wkipedia, b). At closer
examination, some of the suicides in Snow indeed also seem connected to failures at
maintenance of virginity or forced marriages (Pamuk, 13, 15, 46).
As shown above, many reasons are given as to why the girls commit suicide,
most of them pointing to patriarchal oppression legitimized by religion, but there is
little expansion for why they willingly choose to wear what some, as for instance the
actress Funda Eser, clearly see as the symbol of this oppression. Funda Eser tells the
audience during the first play that the “scarf, the fez, the turban and the headdress
were symbols of the reactionary darkness in our souls” (Pamuk, 151 – 152). Since the
percentage of women wearing headscarves has dropped from 16 to 11 percent in
Turkey, according to an article in Newsweek, perhaps more and more women agree
with Funda’s interpretation (Matthews, 2006).
Head scarves play an important role in the two plays that Funda’s husband
Sunay stages, but they are not included in the statement about the events that different
characters co-write. When Blue first suggests to write the statement, his lover Kadife
reflects that there will not be any mention in the statement of the head scarf girls and
their struggle. Kadife says that she pities “these men wasting so much effort to gain
exposure themselves while we endure so much to protect our privacy” (Pamuk, 236).
Wearing a head scarf is thus not seen by Kadife as a way to make a statement;

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 10

consequently she does not see wearing a scarf as a way to be seen, instead of pitied,
something that is very important to the men (Pamuk, 410).
Yet, the wearing of head scarves is not a trivial matter for the girls. As
mentioned, they are willing to go against the authorities and be banned from school if
they are not allowed to wear their scarves. According to Muslim researcher Rachel
Woodlock “ the ability to choose whether to veil or not, in accordance with the
Muslim feminist’s own personal interpretation of Islamic faith and morality, is the
very heart of what Islam represents to Muslim feminists: the basic Qur’anic ethic of
the sovereign right of both women and men as human beings who have the freedom
of self-determination” (Woodlock, 2007). If Woodlock is right, the girls in Snow
perhaps choose to wear the scarves as a symbol of self-determination.
Interestingly, an explanation for the suicides similar to Woodlock’s
explanation about veils is given by Hande. She says that girls commit suicide as a way
to control their own bodies, and explain that control is “what suicide offers girls
who’ve been duped into giving up their virginity, and it’s the same for virgins who are
married off to men they don’t want” (Pamuk, 124), implying that it is a question about
self-determination. That is to say, that in their oppressed situation the only possibility
to some measure to control about what will happen to one’s body is to commit
suicide.
Yet to escape their oppressed situation, they could simply steal some money
and leave, as Kadife points out (Pamuk, 397). Kadife therefore gives what she thinks
is the real reason: “women commit suicide to save their pride” (Pamuk, 397). Just as
the men decide to despise anything Western to avoid having to ‘grovel’ (Pamuk, 350),
women perhaps accept oppression rather than loose their pride by imitating Western
emancipation. When the oppression becomes unbearable, they commit suicide.

References:
a. Book
Habib, M.A.R. 2005. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present.
Malden, USA: Blackwell Publishing.

McGhee, Paul E. 1979. Humor: Its Origin and Development. Sanfransisco: W.H.
Freeman and Company.

Zainul Mujahid & Supeno, 2010 11

Sisk, Jean and Jean Saunders. 1972. Composing Humor, Twain, Thurber, and You.
New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, Inc.

Pamuk, Orhan. 2005. Snow. New York: Vintage International.

b. Internet sources

Amnesty International. ‘Turkey: Women Confronting Family Violence Summary’.

2004.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engEUR440232004?open&of=eng-tur.
Accessed on 9 December 2010

Cadzow, Hunter. New Historicism (2nd ed, 2005)

http://litguide.press.jhu.edu/cgibin/view.cgi?eid=194&query=new%20historicism
Accessed on 9 December 2010

Matthews, Owen. ‘Mission Impossible?’ Newsweek, 2006.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15938227/site/newsweek/page/2/
Accessed on 11 December 2010

Wikipedia, a . http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_historicism.
Accessed on 10 December 2010

Wikipedia, b . http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_
European_Union
Accessed on 9 December 2010

Wikipedia, c. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/Ottoman_empire.
Accessed on 9 December 2010

Wikipedia, d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/Kars. Accessed on 9 December 2010

Woodlock, Rachel. ‘Muslim Feminists and the Veil: To Veil or not to Veil – is the
Question?’
www.islamfortoday.com/feminists_veil.htm. Accessed on 15 Januray 2007

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