Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 13

time and “I’m reasonably sure that we survive” (69) despite the challenges that
mortality provides. “I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy,
healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audi-
ence, sans anything but his art” (300-301). That is what I would like to leave you
with tonight. I am a writer with an audience here for this match but that is just
my present. My future is unknown, but based on my past I think it is safe to say
that tonight will be ok. Thank you.
Team Couplets: Ladies and gentlemen, you have saved the best for last. Our
team is composed of not one, not two, but five members who actually double as
each other which leaves us with “a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king,
another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old
poet…” (301). This first lunatic is Gradus who also doubles as Kinbote. Mo-
ments before John Shade was murdered by Gradus, Kinbote muttered “I will kill
him” (293) which implies murderous intent on Kinbote’s part. Upon reflection
he wondered: “had I ever seen Gradus before? Let me think. Had I? Memory
shakes her head” (293). The reason he cannot seem to come up with a solid
memory of Gradus is perhaps because the only time he would have seen that
face was in the mirror. We have Kinbote giving “a temporary granting to Gradus
of the status of man” (279) which suggests that he is not a whole man but a part
of one. Perhaps the darker parts of Kinbote himself. The half-man Gradus had
different reflections of himself too, “Jacques d’Argus – or Jack Grey, for that
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