logo

71 pages 2 hours read

Orhan Pamuk

My Name is Red

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Symbols & Motifs

The Color Red

Readers are alerted to the importance of color not only from the book’s title, but also at the very start of the novel when the murderer advises “Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors” (17). While colors feature prominently in Pamuk’s novel, with a character named Black and vivid descriptions of vibrant illustrations and white snow, the most important color and the one with the most symbolic meaning is red. Appearing as a narrator in its own chapter, the color red defines itself in terms of what it has depicted, including blood, clothing, and passion. Its power, the color asserts, lies in its ability to attract notice due to its strong and fiery connotations.

Aside from lust and violence, red also symbolizes the movement from sight to blindness. Two characters within the novel—Master Osman and the murderer—are blinded by the plumed needle once employed by a famed miniaturist to blind himself. After Master Osman chooses to blind himself to see the world through Allah’s eyes, he notes that “the colors of the world did not darken, but seemed to bleed ever so gently into one another” and the first objects he mentions seeing with his clouding eyes are the “red and oxblood cloth of the Treasury” (324). Therefore, the color red here symbolizes Allah’s gift to the blind artist, who experiences the vibrancy and passion of the world before losing all sight. Enishte undergoes a similar experience following his death. As his soul leaves his body and he nears Allah, Enishte feels “the presence of an absolutely matchless red” (230). This color permeates everything he sees in the afterlife.

Olive, revealed at last as the murderer, is also associated with the color red throughout the novel. Master Osman, when analyzing the secret book created for the Sultan, notes that “the illustration of Red in Enishte’s book [was] doubtless the work of Olive” (254). This subtle clue, hidden among Osman’s lengthy analyses of illustrations, links the title of the novel and the mystery’s clue to Olive. It also points to Olive’s attempts to seek immortality through art, as red is the color that most fully exemplifies the divine.

In conclusion, the color red functions as a marker of power throughout Pamuk’s novel. It attracts attention with its connection to the blood of life and the passion of love. Yet, it also symbolizes the divine force of the universe as seen by the blinded and the dead, representing Islamic faith through its transformative authority.

Blindness of the Artist

Within Pamuk’s novel, blindness functions as a recurring motif. Miniaturists are often depicted going blind or seeking to go blind, which is presented not as a loss but instead as access to an alternative type of knowledge and the culmination of the traditional Islamic relationship to their artistic craft. Indeed, many of the artists described in the novel view blindness as a blessing from Allah that will allow them to enter more fully into an eternal understanding of the world. Blindness within Pamuk’s work, therefore, operates as both a sign of a true traditional master miniaturist and a critique of the inability of conservative Islamic artists to understand their own blindness to the changing world.

Both the murderer and Butterfly quote a passage from the Quran to explain their ideas about blindness: “The blind and the seeing are not equal” (287, 380). According to a traditional interpretation of this passage, the mark of a true artist is his blindness, which allows the artist to understand and represent what Allah alone can see. Therefore, the goal of the miniaturist, as the murderer explains, is to learn to draw in the dark and to later paint from memory when he goes blind.

The idea that paintings are products of memory rather than engagement with seen reality features in many of the stories the miniaturists tell Black. Olive’s stories, in particular discuss this idea, describing artists whose blindness did not dim their abilities: One blind master miniaturist from Olive’s stories concluded that “Since my eyes will no longer be distracted by the filth of this world, I’ll be able to depict all the glories of Allah from memory, in their purest form” (77).

Like the earlier master miniaturist Bihzad, Master Osman also chooses to blind himself. His realization that “everything is coming to an end” (317), meaning that the type of art that he knew and taught would soon become obsolete, inspires the aging master to push Bihzad’s needle into his eyes. For Osman, the act validates his position as an artist and allows him the opportunity to experience the gift he believes Allah gives to those who remain true to the Islamic tradition of painting. However, the novel implies that Osman’s physical loss of sight actually represents his willful ignorance of reality: Osman refuses to accept Olive’s guilt despite evidence showing that Olive is the murderer; he also ignores the undeniable fact that art is a changing rather than a static form of expression.

Hüsrev and Shirin

Written by the medieval Persian poet Nizami, the romance Hüsrev and Shirin is one of the most popular and well-known stories in the Islamic world. This tragic narrative poem follows the life of Hüsrev, who falls for the Armenian princess Shirin after seeing her in a dream. Shirin also falls for Hüsrev without seeing him. After they meet in person, though, Hüsrev is forced to wed another woman for political reasons and Shirin is courted by another man. After Hüsrev's wife dies and he condemns Shirin's suitor to death, the two finally marry. However, Hüsrev's son also loves Shirin and kills his father. In response to her beloved's death, Shirin dies by suicide.

The novel alludes to various episodes and characters from this love story, juxtaposing the doomed lovers to the more hopeful relationship between Black and Shekure. Both characters view themselves as similar to the fictional lovers and frequently regard themselves as representations of Hüsrev and Shirin. Black's first view of Shekure, for example, reminds him of "that moment, pictured a thousand times, in which Hüsrev visits Shirin beneath her window" (35). Likewise, after seeing Black, Shekure sends him a letter and encloses an illustration Black once drew for her that also depicted the same moment. In addition to Black and Shekure, other characters also reference this famous story. Master miniaturist Bihzad’s representation of the murder of Hüsrev by his son, for instance, is mentioned by the murderer to characterize his own fear of death.

My Name Is Red does not retell the story of the tragic lovers or position Black and Shekure as versions of Hüsrev and Shirin. Instead, Pamuk reveals how characters within his work understand their world through storytelling and the artistic representation. All of the scenes depicted and alluded to, rather than functioning as clear retellings of the traditional tale, allow characters to frame their own emotional responses, showing how powerful the use of art is for not only the characters but our understanding of the novel.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text