Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal | Page 60

The Trial of Charles Kinbote
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,
It is my privilege to represent his royal highness Charles Kinbote today.
You have heard the prosecutor explain what she hopes to prove: that the
defendant is insane. You have not been given all the facts. It is my duty to
present the truth. In the beginning Kinbote says “the depth charge of
Shade’s death blasted such secrets and caused so many dead fish to float
up, that I was forced to leave New Wye soon after my last interview with
the jailed killer” (17). Why would Shade’s death cause problems for the
defendant if he was not in fact hiding an enormous secret? From the start
we can see that Kinbote is not just an ordinary professor with an ordinary
background.
In the poem written by the defendant’s dear friend John Shade, we see
multiple instances where he references Zembla. For instance, canto one
line 12 “crystal land” and canto three line 719 “strange world” both refer to
the distant land of Zembla. In the first reference we see the defendant
comments that it is “perhaps an allusion to Zembla, my dear country” (74).
The defendant also presents two lines from the drafts the poet left, “Ah, I
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