Analysis of Elif Shafak's Novel The Flea Palace

Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace consists most obviously of many stories within a story. Focusing on an apartment building in Istanbul named Bonbon Palace, the reader learns about each of the tenants. In the layering of chapters, Shafak creates an interesting diversity of idiosyncratic characters. Through this range of personas, a multi-dimensional representation of Istanbul emerges.

Shafak's metaphor between these residents of Bonbon Palace and Agripina's chocolate box is important. After living numbly for many years in an asylum, Agripina is given a box of chocolates by her husband. We see a brief emotional revival in Agripina: "Agripina immediately reached for the other bonbons asking her husband the flavour each time. The yellow ones were lemon, reds cinnamon; greens were mint, oranges tangerine; browns caramel and the beige ones vanilla... With each new bonbon she tasted, the colours Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova had left in Istanbul returned to her" (59). Like the candy in the box, each of the characters we meet is unique, distinctive, and realistic in his or her idiosyncrasies.

But this is not all Shafak accomplishes in The Flea Palace. In addition to a host of irreplaceable characters, these personas represent different aspects of the city. When seen together, they come together as a representation of Istanbul: "Agripina did not stop. Not only did she not stop, she placed the wrappers on top of one another creating new hues. After a few attempts she placed red on top of blue and witnessed the whole world turn purple. A wheezing cry escaped her lips: 'Is-tan-bul!' She had found it... In the spectrum of colours and hues, Istanbul was purple; a grayish-bluish purple the eye-dazzling sun reflecting from the lead-plated domes blotted drop-by-drop and scorched strike-by-strike" (60). Through this metaphor, Elif Shafak demonstrates how the individual characters, in living in the same space and, like the candy wrappers, in their layering over each other, represent Istanbul.

In The Flea Palace, Istanbul is embodied not only as a location, but also as an abstract character in itself. In the same way Shafak reveals the traits of individual characters, Shafak reveals the character traits of Turkey and Istanbul. Shafak consistently personifies Istanbul: "they arrived but at first glance neither the city could recognize them nor they the city" (61). We see Agripina angry at Istanbul itself when she first arrives there: "she interpreted the persistence of Istanbul in withdrawing herself behind the veil of fog as intentional hostility and personal insult" (40). As Ethel, the narrator's friend, complains, Turkey is a country fallen behind in terms of the Western world and the Eastern world. It used to be prosperous and a cultural, intellectual center. Ethel refers to the "inferiority complex of the nation": "'just think, we'll put a stopper on this chronic brain-drain, and within the first five years we will even reverse the current. Then Western minds will be at our service. We'll cure the inferiority complex of the nation'" (163).

In another metaphor for the city, we see Istanbul as a pregnant woman, swelled to the point of bursting: "Istanbul, she thought, resembled a woman heavy with child-a woman who during the last months of pregnancy had put on far more weight than she could carry" (294). This metaphorical 'pregnancy' of Istanbul provides a correlation with the characters Agripina and Meryem, both of whom are pregnant during at least one point in the novel. Continuing this metaphor, Shafak writes, personifying Istanbul, "how desperately she would like to, if only she could, get rid of this excruciating burden. Instead all she could do was simply swell up throughout the centuries" (294). The swelling of this city reminds the reader of Bonbon Palace itself, and how it swells with garbage to the point of bursting. Bonbon Palace is personified as a location with human character and can also be likened as a metaphor for Istanbul as a whole. The narrator notes, "perhaps I liken Bonbon Palace to myself-a disgruntled apartment that bitterly misses the prosperity it was once accustomed to" (193). Perhaps this decrease in prosperity in the narrator and Bonbon Palace mirrors the decrease in prosperity experienced by Istanbul.

As a reader, I often wondered what Shafak is articulating about Istanbul through the description and actions of each specific character we meet. Through the format of the novel, it is easy to pick up on layers of metaphors represented by various people living in Bonbon Palace. Is Istanbul an underdog like Meryem's son Mohammet? A pregnant woman like Agripina or Meryem? A torn yet innately united city like the hairdressers Celal and Cemal? Perhaps Istanbul can be compared to a woman in limbo like The Blue Mistress: "there she was, in the middle of the two, swaying toward either end" (176). Maybe Istanbul is like Sidar, a character obsessed with death, who would rather hide from confrontation than anything: "here he could stay away from the turmoil that plagued every corner in Istanbul; as long as he was home, contrary to the world outside he could remain entirely still and utterly calm" (228). Or, Madam Auntie's proclivity to collect the garbage of others may be the best metaphor for the swelled, bursting city of Istanbul.

There exists in The Flea Palace an interesting exploration of the past. In the same way Shafak narrates the story with a non-linear and expansive portrayal of time (we see Istanbul all the way from when the graveyard existed to current day, when Injustice Pureturk rams his pest removal van into the garbage heap in front of Bonbon Palace in just the first part of the novel), the setting of the story can be seen as physical, sedimentary layers of time. "Had these elevators operated not only between the ground and upper floors but also further down into the ground, one would have seen, like slices cut from a colossal cake, all the segments of life's inner workings. At the very bottom, there would be layer upon layer of the earth's crust, then rough, knobby soil; upon that a stratum of decimated graves, followed by a very thin line of tarmac road, a couple of flats piled up on one another, a layer of red-brick roof and, on top of it all, a sky of endless cerulean plastered and diffused all over" (35). Shafak's emphasis on the past and the passage of time in The Flea Palace accentuates Istanbul as an ancient city with a rich history. In a sense, everything in Istanbul (not only Bonbon Palace) is built on top of a cemetery-a symbolic cemetery of passed time, if not a physical one.

Shafak, Elif. The Flea Palace.
Translated by Muge Gocek
Marion Boyars Publishing
Turkey, 2002