Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal | Page 65

You have heard the prosecuting party explain what he hopes will be prov-
en through examination of the novel Pale Fire. To start off with the core ar-
gument, the prosecution has made the claim that Johnathan Shade was
murdered by Charles Kinbote himself. To jump to this conclusion merely
based on the contents of Pale Fire is an entirely hasty decision. The pros-
ecutor has shown us that, throughout the commentary of the novel, Kin-
bote writes the scenes about the supposed murderer, Gradus, in very vivid
detail. Pointing out page 274 of the text as an example, the prosecutor has
shown the jury the passage in which Kinbote writes: “He (Gradus) had
never been to New York before… on the previous night he had counted
the mounting rows of lighted windows in several skyscrapers, and now, af-
ter checking the height of a few more buildings, he felt that he knew all
that there was to know.” To quote directly, the prosecutor has stated that
“The level of depth to which Kinbote describes Gradus’s thoughts and ac-
tions throughout this commentary seems to show that they have a deep
connection, despite his claim that he had no memory of ever seeing him
before. Perhaps the two are one?” [See the in-depth commentary in the
footnote to Line 1000, where Kinbote does indeed state that he has no
memory of prior encounters with Gradus].
I now ask the jury: Is the level of depth to which Kinbote describes his
deep, everlasting bond with the poet John Shade not equally as specific?
Throughout the novel’s commentary, Kinbote describes his love for Shade
as a fan of his work, and as a friend. From the moment that Kinbote de-
scribes the beginnings of his relationship with Shade in the (most elo-
quently written) footnotes to the poem’s first Canto, we see a budding,
magical friendship form between the two. We also know that Kinbote re-
peatedly describes his tragically dashed hope that the poet Shade was
writing not about his own life, but instead the gripping tale of the exiled ex-
King of Zembla. On page 296, we see his palpable anguish in the discov-
ery that this poem was autobiographical in nature, when Kinbote writes,
“We know how firmly, how stupidly I believed that Shade was composing a
poem, a kind of romaunt, about the King of Zembla. We have been pre-
pared for the horrible disappointment in store for me.” However, we also
know that Kinbote only learned the true contents of the poem after
Shade’s death, and that he valiantly protected the poem from destruction
because he thought, even as his beloved friend the poet was passing be-
fore his eyes, that the poem might contain writings which could solidify his
memory in the annals of time. Whatever rage Kinbote might have felt at
the realization that Shade’s work was not the tragic story of the Zemblan
King, he had no higher desire than to keep the poet very much alive when
he thought that the poet was indeed writing this tale. Given this, I ask the
65