Valdimir Nabokov Symbolism

Signs and Symbols of Death In Valdimir Nabokov’s short story “Symbols and Signs”, he discusses the life of a Russian family with a mentally ill son. Nabokov begins the story with an eerie mood and concludes by leaving his audience puzzled. The melancholy diction he utilizes in his story factors strongly into the mania that is mentioned throughout the story, in addition to the mystery that leaves readers to ponder at the end. Nabokov introduces the son as “a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind” with no desires, which he later coins “referential mania” (Nabokov). Therefore, it is safe for individuals to infer that the son may be disoriented from reality. However, due to the mother’s ability to accept her son’s deranged way of life, and to accommodate, the audience may observe certain signs that reveal her own potential mania. For example, “the invisible giants hurting her boy”, the fate of tenderness as it is crushed
The train “losing life”, the bird twitching helplessly, the girl weeping on the shoulder of an older lady, and the reminiscence of the son by the mother gives a foreshadowing impression to readers. However, at the end of “Symbols and Signs”, it seems that the audience is left to make their own conclusion about whether the final phone call is the sanitarium informing the parents that their son has finally completed his mission. Moreover, in contrast to the pattern of events that may indicate the death of the son, it is possible that there is a deeper meaning. As Nabokov once said, “’the design of my novel is fixed in my imagination’”, which does not leave the audience with the opportunity to go with the ending they see the best fit, but to decipher what Nabokov really meant. Due to his desire to “’compose riddles with elegant solutions’”, his intentions could be to solely leave the audience puzzled at the end of the story