In the novel White Castle, a young Italian scholar has been captured and imprisoned by the Ottoman Empire on his way from Venice to Naples. Pasha enslaves the Italian scholar, and after a series of events, gives the Italian slave to Hoja. We learn in the story that the two men (the Italian slave and Hoja) resemble each other in different aspects. Throughout the story, the theme of East verses West is being introduced and hinted out by the author in different parts of the novel. The theme becomes especially obvious in the context of the relationship between the Italian scholar, who is a Christian and hence represents the West and Hoja, who is a Muslim and hence represents the East. In this paper, I will discuss the Idea of East versus West in the White Castle in the context of religion and science.

The first presence of East versus West in the novel was in the religious conflict between the two parties. For example, the narrator discusses how the Ottoman soldiers hung their icons of the Virgin Mary and crucifixes upside down, further allowing the hotheads to degrade and insult these religious symbols. This meant more or less that people are not just happy about defeating the Italian voyage, but they were happy that the Christians were defeated, since the Christians represented a much larger group. The conflict of religion was introduced again when Pasha tried to force the Italian scholar to convert to Islam by threatening to kill him if he refused.

Once again, we see the conflict between the East and the West introduced in the novel and contextualized in terms of science. The conflict becomes more obvious in the novel when Hoja and the narrator (the Italian scholar) start working together and exchange knowledge about different areas of science. The narrator always thought that he was smarter and more knowledgeable than Hoja, at that time he discerned my