Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal | Page 19

The argument of whether Charles Kinbote is guilty in the death of John
Shade is a tricky one, to say the least. On one hand, it is likely that John
Shade, whose heart is certainly not the healthiest, could have died of nat-
ural causes. On the other, Kinbote frequently displays all the qualities of
your classic stalker, and is more than capable of having committed the
murder of Shade.
All the evidence is displayed within the pages of Pale Fire. Right at the be-
ginning of the text, Kinbote offers the reader a great number of details re-
garding the manner in which Shade’s poem was written. “Pale Fire, a po-
em in heroic couplets, of nine hundred ninety-nine lines, divided into four
cantos, was composed by John Francis Shade (born July 5, 1898, died
July 21, 1959)...” (13). He goes on to describe the notecards on which the
poem was composed, the intricacies of Shade’s handwriting, and even the
time of day when Shade would frequently work on his project. “John
Shade usually copied out his daily quota of completed lines at mid-
night…” (13). The specificity of some of these details could indicate an ob-
sessive quality in Kinbote, and an unnatural ability to know far too much
detail about Shade’s writing habits, which could be a result of Kinbote’s
watching him without his knowledge. However, these same details, others
could argue, can indicate merely an intense interest in Shade’s work.
19