Summary Of Pale Fire By Kinbote

The opposite also holds true, or as Corn phrases it, the reader must “shuttle between the two stories and somehow synthesize them” (84). This act of fluidly moving between the micronarratives in Pale Fire is not lost on Nabokov as the eccentric Kinbote writes in his forward, “I find it wise in such cases as this to eliminate the bother of back-and-forth leafing by either cutting out and clipping together pages with the text of the thing, or, even more simply, purchasing two copies of the same work...” (Nabokov 28).

The most immediate understanding of the intertextual conversation found in Pale Fire is seen through Kinbote’s desire to parallel Shade’s poem with the story of King Charles and Zembla. This interplay commences on the very first line the poem when Shade writes “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain” (Nabokov 33). Kinbote begins his elaborate story of Zembla by noting on page 73 that the waxwing
Although the circumstances surrounding the murder of Shade are explained differently in Kinbote’s reality versus Shade’s reality, Gradus represents the same role. He mistakes his intended assassination target and kills Shade. The reader must be aware of the intertextual conversation taking place through the novel, whether it be through flipping back and forth between the poem and the text, comparing two books side by side, or referencing the index after an incredibly careful read through. If the reader understands that Gradus holds one purpose- the murdered of Shade in each character’s reality, the reader will understand that neither the poem nor the commentary can take precedence over the other, as the conclusion in each is the same. Leotard’s concept of refusing the metanarrative holds true as each micronarrative holds the same weight in Pale Fire because each micronarrative concludes with the exact same event, even if line 1000 is implicated by