Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal | Page 62

“resemblance was absolutely unheard of” (265), and even as the defend-
ant tried to keep his disguise a secret, this man was sure that he was the
exiled King.
Finally, I would ask the jury to consider these last remarks when you are
debating this case. From the previously mentioned encounter with the wit-
ness, we also hear Shade say that “Kings do not die – they only disap-
pear, eh, Charles” (266)? In the context of that conversation one can con-
clude that not only did Shade already know Kinbote’s secret, but that he
believed Kinbote was the King. At the tail end of Kinbote’s remarks we
found a quite obvious hint. Kinbote says “Oh, I may do many things! Histo-
ry permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great
sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain” (301). In
closing, Charles Kinbote and King Charles are one in the same and I
would ask the jury to find the defendant not guilty of insanity. Thank you.
The Death of John Shade
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,
I am here on behalf of the late poet John Shade, who is no longer with us
due to the fact he was murdered. The defense will argue that this death
was caused naturally, from heart attack, but I will prove he was shot and
killed. The murderer goes by many names, but for the sake of this case he
will be referred to simply as Gradus. John Shade was killed on July 21 st in
the presence of his dear friend Charles Kinbote, who was supposedly the
intended target. The prosecution will be drawing from a certain text with
records about Gradus’s travels and intentions over the course of three
weeks leading up to the murder.
I will start with an excerpt from Shades poem about “An imbecile with side-
burns was about to use his gun, but you were much too quick” (49). This
imbecile is obviously Gradus and the other man Shade references here is
Kinbote, which were the three men at the scene of the crime, (besides a
gardener, which we will come back to later). This poem was annotated by
none other than Kinbote himself, and done so after Shade’s death so we
are left with intertwining stories of past and present. In fact, in the com-
ments on lines 1-4 he states that “a certain fateful fact, the departure from
Zembla of the would-be regicide Gradus” (74), coincides with the start of
Shade’s poem and the use of the word certain here leads us to assume
that Gradus’s departure had something to do with Shade himself.
Again we see indication of Gradus as a murderer in the comments to line
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