themes of crime and punishment in nabovok's invitation to a beheading

7/25/2019 Themes of Crime and Punishment in Nabovok's Invitation to a Beheading

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Poor, poor CincinnatusThemes of Crime and Punishment inInvitation to a Beheading


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Cincinnatus C.

Cincinnatus is, above all, a day dreamer. Much of thestory takes place in his imagination, his only solace.Prior to his imprisonment, he was married to a

beautiful adulteress, Marthe, whom he desperatelyloves and wishes to have visit. Cincinnatus is opaquein a transparent world and incomprehensibly strangeto everyone around him. We witness his humiliation, aswell as insistence on expressing himself and retaininghis individuality. He is an eminently sympatheticcharacter, despite being on death row.


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The Spider

Cincinnatus cellmate, the spider, serves as a parallel for thetricks played on Cincinnatus by his jailers: each feeding time

for the spider - always fed by the guard - accompanies anopportunity for authorities to trap him in a feeling of falsehope, whether drawings outlining an escape plan that wouldnever come to pass or a visit from his wife deferred. At the

end of his stay in this prison, Cincinnatus finds that thespider was merely a plush round body with twitching legsmade of springs, and, there was, attached to the middle of itsback, a long elastic. (210) The spiders existence had itselfbeen a cruel trick.


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The Pencil

Invitation to a Beheadingis not Nabokovs only exploration of apencil as narrative device - having also used it inTransparent

Things -but it is expertly employed as a instrument with whichthe reader can measure the length of Cincinnatus life.

Cincinnatus, the diarist and our narrator, uses the pencil daily.

At the start of his sentence, lay a beautifully sharpened pencil,as long as the life of any man except Cincinnatus (12) on thetable of his cell. On the day of his beheading, however,scribbling his final missive, Cincinnatus finds his pencil,stunted. (206)


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: . , ,or possessing spiritual

knowledge.Turpitude: (noun) vile, shameful, or

ase character! depravit".

l turpitude exists, defined as: conduct that is considered contrary to comm


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Cincinnatus crime is never fully explained, yet he is oftenasked to repent for it. His gnostical turpitude has notonly marked him a social outcast, but his wife as well.From dreamy flashbacks to his childhood, the reader gets asense that his charge is related to Cincinnatus' ability to dothings like levitate with little regard for the social norms he

transgresses. But how can one repent such a crime?

Gnostical turpitude seems explicitly designed to not onlyforce conformity on a populace, but to be used against

anyone not properly conforming, for any reason authoritiesdeem appropriate. Cincinnatus, it appears, is punished for

being true to himself in spite of social pressures to thecontrary.


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Cincinnatus punishment is two-fold: equally death andbeing forced into fend off his jailers attempts to diminish hisdignity. When Cincinnatus refuses to play along with hisjailers games, preferring to read or write in his journal, hestreated like an indignant child. The layers of his humiliationbecome increasingly evident throughout the novel.

The greatest cruelty here - among other great cruelties - isthat Cincinnatus is never allowed any understanding of hiscrime. His punishment serves no purpose but entertainment.

Cincinnatus himself is considered a novelty and his formerlife - his home, his wife, the park where they spent manyhappy times - are all things used to torture and mock himwhile in custody.


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Invitation to a Beheadingends ambiguously. Manyarguments have been made for both sides of whether

Cincinnatus is in fact killed, or has been rescued bysome sort of resistance group. What is clear is that hehas retained his dignity to the very end, and leaves

behind a city that is both literally and figuratively

crumbling.

themes of crime and punishment in nabovok's invitation to a beheading

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