Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal | Page 37

How? Because the prosecution’s entire case is founded on refuting Kin-
bote’s account of Shade’s final days - his wishes for
the poem, their relationship, and the nature of his
death - under the guise of reading between the lines.
I don’t need to specifically prove Shade was mur-
dered. I just need to show why their reasons to doubt
his words are unfair.
AMERICAN LAWYER
Unfair? He’s clearly insane!
ZEMBLAN LAWYER
In Kinbote’s faithful publication of Pale Fire, he frequently describes the
prejudices he is faced with - which the prosecution
takes as proof of a disturbed state. Every person he
meets labels him in some way.
Page 25, students portray him as a "woman hater." Same page, a woman
calls him "insane" and "remarkably disagreeable" for
simply not partaking in an event not suited to his
tastes. Page 195, coworkers described him as hav-
ing "a deranged mind" and being unfit to edit
Shade’s final work. Even Kinbote’s expressions of
passion or loneliness are taken negatively. Look!
(He pulls out his own poster boards, to the surprise of the American Law-
yer.
They read:)
Page 169: " ... Shade kept evading me, me, who was hysterically, intense-
ly, uncontrollably curious to know what portion exact-
ly of the Zemblan king’s adventures he had complet-
ed ..."
Page 181: "One gets so accustomed to another life’s running alongside
one’s own that a sudden turn-off on the part of the
parallel satellite causes in one a feeling of stupefac-
tion, emptiness, and injustice. And what is more he
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