Author Vladimir Nabokov

Paper Summary:

This paper explains Nabokov's ultimate theme is the meaning and loss of identity, the moment where the soul is either subsumed into another or finds its grounds for resistance. The author points out that Nabokov creates a grand insecurity of being through words and through story and forces his readers to confront the fact that they themselves are no more stable in their being than are the characters they peruse. The paper relates that the Nabokov's infamous work, "Lolita," is a sordidly poetic novel representing in microcosm much of the pathos and glory of all his work.

From the Paper:

"Both short stories, "That in Aleppo Once..." and "Conversation Piece," have in common themes, which address the high costs of turning other living people into fantasies. In "Conversation Piece" there are certain obvious costs, such as the way that the narrator is consistently getting arrested, molested, or harrassed in place of his double. However, there is also an undertheme of the more severe costs of fantasizing others rather than letting them be themselves. This is evident in the narrator's inability to express his opinions regarding the harms, which Nazi-ism had done to the women who probably needed to hear it, because he could not get past his stereotype of them as blind and sterile individuals, and his vision of Germans as murders or worse."

More papers on Author Vladimir Nabokov:

• Analytical Essay # 111 : "Short Stories of Vladimir Nabokov"
• Analytical Essay # 57759 : "Novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Albert Camus"
• Book Review # 92112 : "The Narrative Frame of Nabokov's "Lolita"

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