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| Plot Summary of Pale Fire |
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"An obsessed ex-King, Charles Kinbote, who has escaped to America and has fallen in love with the poetry of John Shade, and has "kidnapped" his last poem (the 1,000 line poem "Pale Fire", in heroic couplets, which he completed just before he was killed) and has taken it upon himself to write a commentary of it, including his own story in much of the commentary. This book is filled with puzzle after puzzle after puzzle, though very easy to enjoy for the non-literary minded reader. It's on the top 100 list of books (in English) from the twentieth century, and is truly a wonderwork of imagination and joy."
David J. Peterson, Resident Scholar
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"John Shade, a poet and English professor at a small New England college, composed an epic 999-line poem just before his death in July 1959. A colleague named Charles Kinbote, an exile from the east European nation of Zembla, befriended Shade in the final five months of his life, and filled his ear with the story of the Zemblan revolution the year before, the escape of the king to America, and the assassin who is in pursuit of said monarch, hoping Shade would put the saga into a poem. _Pale Fire_ consists of the poem, clearly a love poem to Shade's wife and memoriam to their dead daughter, and Kinbote's obsessive scholarly notes in which he retells his Zemblan saga, reading out of the poem parts of his story that probably aren't there. But the assassin is real, and on his way. Nabokov's book is a formal tour-de-force, and a satire on academic scholarship, but a remarkably easy read for all that."
David Loftus, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of Pale Fire |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Time/era of story
- 1930's-1950's
Life of a profession:
- writer
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Job/Profession/Status story
Yes
Main Character
Gender
- Male
Profession/status:
- scholar
Age:
- 40's-50's
Eccentric/Mental
Yes
Eccentric:
- eccentric
- obsessed
- mentally ill
- deluded
- emotionally unstable
Ethnicity/Nationality
- Eastern European
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Strong but gentle sense of humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- healthy but a geeky weakling
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- 20's-30's
Profession/status:
- killer
Eccentric/Smart/Dumb:
Yes
Eccentric:
- dumb
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- a little/some
How sensitive is this character?
- hard edged
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 1 ()
United States
Yes
The US:
- Northeast
The Americas (not US):
Yes
City?
Yes
Small town?
Yes
Style
Person
- mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
Unusual Style:
- a lot of play on words
- a lot of flashback and forwards
- No single main character?
Amount of dialog
- little dialog
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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