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).