Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 38

I mean, even when I was younger - you remember the barn anecdote? I tried to
include her in my passions, but I should have known she wasn’t into that. She’s
just not like me. She got restless, and I told her she “always [spoiled] every-
thing” (192). We just didn’t see eye to eye. My father always had to smooth
things over between us.
DR. GREYSON
Your father seems to be more compassionate towards … Kinbote.
HAZEL SHADE
Yes. He put up with me, as best he could. He even tried to encourage my mother
to do the same. “And I love you most / When with a pensive nod you greet her
ghost” (43). Not a supernatural ghost - but me, as Kinbote, the ghost of the
daughter she once had.
DR. GREYSON
I’m glad you phrased it that way. Going off of that - why does your father de-
scribe your suicide in his poem? You clearly survived.
HAZEL SHADE
Poetic license. I suppose in many ways, I did die to them. I killed that part of me
- at least for a little while… And my father spends much of Canto Three discuss-
ing the absurd nature of life and death, doesn’t he?
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