An aspect of Nabokov's Pale fire : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in English at Massey University

Abstract

Pale Fire is a novel that is put together in the reader's mind from the material supplied by Nabokov. The reader is presented with four complex blocks of material - two large ones (a 999-line poem by John Shade, and what proclaims itself to be a critical commentary on that poem by Charles Kinbote), and two lesser ones (a foreword and an index, both by Kinbote). The four parts can be fitted together in a number of ways, and the pattern that emerges will depend on the way the reader chooses to relate them. Every reader of the book must attempt the game; but though it is easy to recognise defeat, to become frustrated because the pieces will not fit themselves into a coherent whole, it is impossible to feel confidently triumphant when one achieves a solution for there is no guarantee that the pattern that any reader manages to create is the one that Vladimir Nabokov had in mind when he created the book.