Space-Oriented A Comparison Between Kar (Snow) Novel And The Shining Film

This study, Orhan Pamuk’s novel Kar (“Snow”) has been compared with Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining (which is called in Turkey Cinnet) which is originally adapted from Stephen King’s novel The Shining (1977), which is called in Turkey Medyum, in terms of plot, characters/people and especially space. This comparative research, does not aim at referring to a common intellectual or universal structure by interrelating logical connections between two dissimilar facts; rather it tries to present the conclusions of the associations between two works of art which have few similar sides and parts. The most distinct symbol of this common deep structure which takes part in the novel Kar and the film The Shining (“Cinnet”) is (that) the snow which closes the space where the plot takes place which opens in an uninspiring way after wards. When this issue is scrutinized, it has been understood that both in Kar and The Shining (“Cinnet”), the space which is quickly effected because of the snow, is fictionalized on three processes: the space which has been closed (Space I), the enclosed space (Space II) and the space that has been opened. In the film The Shining, Overlook Hotel is a political symbol of the American history. Similarly, Kars (the city in Turkey) which which is described as the snow’s blowing in the novel Kar shows (a representation of) Turkey’s political landscape. The intellectual deep structure between Kar and The Shining isn’t only intrinsic to the space which is limited with snow, but also it shows similarity in terms of the plot and personal adventure of the characters. While the poet Ka’s unending poems redound on the novel with his quarrels and internal feuds, Jack Torrance’s novel, in which he has not written event sentence, has been added on the film as a triggered element of an insanity which appears step-by-step in the mind that looses its logical system.

Keywords

Snow (Orhan Pamuk Novel 2002), The Shining (directed by Stanley Kubrick 1980), Space, snow