Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 85

Throughout the novel, there is discreet, and maybe not so discreet, evidence of
this whole story being potentially written by a man inside an insane asylum
(Insane in the Membrane). In the foreword, Kinbote is writing about him being
in a meeting with a publisher, however, he describes the room that they are in
as, “… a cell of walnut and glass fifty stories above the progression of scar-
abs…” (17). The use of the word cell implies that he could actually be in a cell in
an asylum. Also, scarabs are beetles, and if he is fifty stories up from ‘scarabs’ he
could be describing people or cars that are far enough away from him to look
like bugs. Since they often keep people in insane asylums far away from the pub-
lic, Kinbote may be alluding to his distance from the real world. The next piece
of evidence we have is that when Kinbote is in a grocery store, a lady, who is a
potential worker at the asylum says, “… ‘You are a remarkably disagreeable per-
son. I fail to see how John and Sybil can stand you,’ and, exasperated by my po-
lite smile, she added: ‘What’s more, you are insane’” (25). First, after she insults
him, he is still politely smiling at her which doesn’t appear to be a sane response
to someone calling another person disagreeable. Then, Kinbote is referred to as
insane. This direct comparison supports the idea that he actually is a mad man
from an insane asylum. At the very end of the novel, Kinbote reflects on the en-
tire story saying that he may write a play with, “… a lunatic who intends to kill
an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a
distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes
in the clash between the two figments” (301). He follows that statement a few
sentences later, saying, “I may huddle and groan in a madhouse” (301). In the
first sentence, he refers to the characters of his ‘play’ about his own preceding
story, as lunatics. If these characters are to parallel the real story, then calling
them lunatics is referring to himself and the other person as lunatics. He then
follows with the thought of him living in a madhouse. This is, yet, another di-
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