Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 99

with only a few characters in mind, and instead made many characters with dif-
ferent names represent the same people, all connected to one another. This pa-
per will be examining this theme and will be examining seven pairs of characters
that exist throughout the novel: Odon and Shade, Shade and Kinbote, Gradus
and Kinbote, Kinbote and Hazel, Hazel and Fleur, Fleur and Disa and Disa and
Sybil. As more and more characters are analyzed, it will become evident how
similar each of the characters in the novel are to one another and all help tie the
themes of the book together.
To pay tribute to the reflective structure of the poem itself, the pairings will
be analyzed in an order so that one character from the previous couplet will be
analyzed with a new character in the next couplet. This will represent how every
character in the novel is tied together and will show that every character in the
novel is a part of the whole itself that is Pale Fire.
The first pair that will be analyzed are Odon and Shade. Odon is a world-
renowned actor from the country Zembla (311) who was a dear friend of the ex-
iled king of Zembla (It, in fact, was rumored that the two were a couple (120)).
The King and Odon were always together, and it was Odon who helped the
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