Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 27

sigh of admiration. Through these pairs, I’m also mistaken for others as well.
This resemblance to the exiled king not only confuses my reality but my identity.
As being often mistaken for King Charles, I guess it’s appropriate to state that
another pair of pairs is used to further my misidentification. I am paired with
another and that pair is paired with another pair (the confusion grows). Who
am I? What is my story? How am I not supposed to go mad when everyone be-
lieves me to be four different people at once? How is my reality not subject to il-
lusions when I am consistently identified as a new person each day? I am not a
pair of people, I am one person.
Line… the rest of the poem basically.
I’ll tell you who I really am. I am one person exploring various sides or shades of
myself. Throughout life, people evolve into new personalities and take on new
attitudes on topics they used to feel differently about. My name is John Shade
and the very diction of my name explains my experience. My world is not black
and white, but rather shades of grey. Gradus, a man of motivation and destiny is
compared to as a shadow, whom I often feel as: a shadow of the man I am or
want to be. There are points in my life where I have felt like Gradus- where I feel
as though a have this vocation that is calling me to my fate. Other times I feel as
though I am Hazel crazed with emotions and overtaken by puberty’s hold. But
just as “cute little school girls [grow in]to smart young ladies and superior moth-
er” (83), I too grew. After the stage of horrendous puberty, I found the simple
joy of love and marriage. The world is a bit more beautiful when the simple mo-
ments such as the one you love “peering at something in a tree” (43) are the
most memorable.
27