assignment 2287

I need 2 pages single spaced.

i don’t have the book so please search and use the 30-day trial.

Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City, translated by Maureen Freely (New York: Vintage, 2006), pp. 286-368 (Chapters 31-37).

please answer the following question

Important Themes in Pamuk, pp. 286-368:

1. Towards the end of the book, Pamuk notes that throughout much of his early life he yearned for melancholy and pain. In fact, he claimed them as his own just as Istanbul (and Turkey) accepted and patiently endured the burden of history and sadness. Defeat, obliteration, and degradation, he notes, were welcome because they would set him free. “To have been beaten and humiliated was to feel free” (p. 270), he recalls. What does he mean by this statement? Explain this sentiment in the context of his personal life but also in the context of the history of Turkey. (Hint: See chapters 33-34.)

2. In the final chapters of the book, Pamuk talks more about his personal life and struggles in his late teens and early twenties. These personal experiences (his first love affair, his dislike of school, his depressing conversations with his mother, among others) are put in the context of a larger society that does not value Turkish art and artists. What does the pain and problems of Pamuk during this time (a young artist in the making as he was) in Istanbul tell you about the priorities of a fast-moving and modernizing society that he grew up in? Why was it that many people appreciated Western art but not Turkish art? Why would they discourage him to pursue his dreams? How do the melancholy of Istanbul and the melancholy of Pamuk merge with one another towards the end of the book?

3. By the end of the book, you should be able to speak of melancholy on at least two levels: (1) at the personal and family level in the Pamuk household, and (2) at the society level in Turkey. In the latter case, the causes of melancholy are said to have (a) economic, (b) social, (c) political, (d) spiritual, and (e) international contexts and origins. Poverty across Istanbul, absence of social diversity the way it used to be under the Ottomans, tension and conflict between different ethnic or political groups, lack of rapid or tangible political progress, not having caught up with the West in terms of power and prosperity, and above all a sense of loss for the richness of the Ottoman or the medieval past are some of the main causes of sadness in Istanbul (and Turkey by implication). The most difficult of all is a sense of shame and humiliation that people feel when they look at the West or their own history in the medieval and early modern periods. At the personal and family level, Pamuk finds many reasons for his sadness which are not unrelated to the general melancholy prevalent in the city and in his country. To what extent do you think these causes of unhappiness in Pamuk’s life are shared by other individuals, families, and people across the Middle East?

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