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Pale Fire By Doris Kinbote Essay

Decent Essays

A King of Jesters The world is filled with humour. It’s everywhere. Whether it’s staring someone directly in the face or hiding in the shadows, it’s there. In Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov, humour is buried within. The humour is created by the differences between John Shade and Charles Kinbote. Their diverse personalities influence how each of them write their respective works. We expect Kinbote’s narrative to be about Shade’s poem; however, he takes the poem and twists it so it all revolves around him in some way. Firstly, Kinbote takes the death of Shade’s daughter, Hazel, and uses it to reflect on himself. Instead of writing about how tragic it must have been for Shade, he takes it as an opportunity to talk about himself. In the commentary, Kinbote’s words do not match with the lines in Shade’s poem. Shade talks about how “a white-scarfed beau/Would never come for [Hazel]”(Shade lines 333-334). Kinbote selfishly replies by asking if someone would “ever come for [him]”(Kinbote page 184). Also, Kinbote implies “that Hazel Shade resembled [him] in certain respects”(193). This is another example where Kinbote uses Hazel as an excuse to mention himself, proving he is …show more content…

The information that Kinbote had on Shade was mostly gained through conversations with Sybil, Shade’s wife, and a large amount of snooping. In one conversation, he learned that “[his] friend had started to work on a long poem”(86). Soon after hearing this, he “felt the blood rush to [his] face and mumbled something about [Shade] not having shown any of it to [him]”(86). Kinbote was embarrassed that Shade did not tell him this news personally and that he had to find out from Sybil. Being skeptical of Sybil, Kinbote “stole through the shrubbery to the rear of their house”(90) one night. He was eager to know why Shade never personally delivered the

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