Read Signs and Symbols by Vladimir Nabokov
Past Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
A Study Guide
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Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings.. � 2012
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.......�Signs and Symbols" is a brusque story centering on the severe mental decrepitude of a young man and on the struggle of his elderly parents to cope with it.
Year of Publication and Championship
.......�Signs and Symbols" was showtime published in the May 15, 1948, issue of The New Yorker magazine. Before publishing the story, the editors of the magazine changed the title to "Symbols and Signs." Afterward the story appeared, Nabokov changed the title back to its original diction. Doubleday and Company republished the story in Garden City, N.Y., in 1958 in Nabokov's Dozen, a collection of Nabokov's short stories.
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Setting
.......The action takes place in a large American city in the apartment of an elderly couple, on public transit systems, on streets, and in a mental hospital. The fourth dimension is 1947 or 1948. The atmosphere, including the atmospheric condition and the scenes that the elderly couple encounter, is bleak and cheerless.
Characters
The Female parent and Father: Russian Jews who lived in Minsk (formerly a city in Russia and now the capital letter of Belarus). They migrated to Germany so, during the rise of Adolf Hitler, to the Us. They have a son and live in a big city, probably New York.
The Son: Mentally deranged twenty-year-old who was born when his mother was in centre age. He suffers from a rare form of paranoia in which he believes that natural and man-fabricated objects are conspiring against him.
Nurse: Staff fellow member in a sanitarium where the son is under treatment.
Telephone Caller: Woman who telephones the mother and father late at dark and asks for a person named Charlie.
Others: Characters mentioned in the narration. These include the following:
Isaac: The male parent'due south blood brother, whom the mother and father refer to as "the Prince." Isaac, who besides lives in the U.Due south., supports the mother and father.Point of View
Mrs. Sol: Next-door neighbour of the female parent and father. She wears a lot of makeup.
Girl With Dark Hair: Bus passenger whom the mother and begetter observe. The girl is crying on the shoulder of a woman.
Rebecca Borisovna: Minsk associate of the female parent and male parent.
Rebecca's Daughter: Woman in Minsk who married a member of the Soloveichik family.
Herman Brink: Person who identifies the mental illness of the son.
High german Maid: Servant of the mother and male parent in Leipzig, Germany.
Fianc� of the Maid
Aunt Rosa: Mother'south relative, who was killed by the Germans.
Dr. Solov: The physician of the mother and begetter.
Elsa: Associate of the mother in the old country.
Swain of Elsa
.......The author tells the story in omniscient third-person bespeak of view, enabling him to present the thoughts of the mother, father, and son.
Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings ... � 2012
.......It is Friday, the birthday of a twenty-year-old man in a sanitarium in a big American city. He suffers from a rare course of paranoia called referential mania, in which he believes nature and sure human-made objects conspire confronting him. For instance, he imagines that clouds brand signs to one some other to substitution detailed data most him. At night, copse apply sign linguistic communication to convey to one another his deepest thoughts.
.......His parents�Russian Jewish immigrants�had been married many years earlier he was born. (The writer does not identify them or their son by name.) Now the parents are old. This yr, as in the previous years, they are taking him a birthday gift advisedly selected to delight him. He generally interprets fabricated objects�those considered gadgets, for example�as either evil or useless. And so they purchased him a basket containing ten small-scale jars of unlike jellies. The mother dresses for the occasion in a black dress with no makeup.
.......Before coming to the U.Due south., the father had been a successful businessman. Now, however, he depends on his brother, Isaac�an American citizen for near forty years�for money. He and his wife phone call him "the Prince."
.......When they are on their style the sanitarium, the subway breaks down; they must sit in silence for xv minutes. Later leaving the subway, they wait a long time for a jitney to take them the rest of the style. Information technology is loaded with noisy high school students. After reaching their destination, they walk through pouring rain to the sanitarium entrance. In one case within, there is more waiting. Finally, a nurse they do non like arrives to inform them their son had attempted suicide. He is all right now, she says, but a visit is out of the question; it might upset him. Since the sanitarium is understaffed and items left for patients tend to get mixed up, they have the gift home with them.
On the double-decker ride back to the subway station, the female parent notices a girl crying on the shoulder of a woman. The girl reminds her of Rebecca Borisovna, a adult female she knew in Minsk, Russia, long ago.
.......Their son's terminal suicide try to escape the prison house of his mind was �a masterpiece of creativity," a medico observed. Ane patient who thought he was trying to larn how to fly intervened, out of envy, inadvertently saving his life. In addition to assertive that clouds and trees are plotting against him, he perceives pebbles, flecks of sunlight, or stains equally symbols and signs forming messages that he must intercept. Pools of water and drinking glass surfaces are spies. Coats in store windows are �prejudiced witnesses," the narrator says, and storms and running water �have a distorted opinion of him and grossly misrepresent his actions." He spends every waking moment decoding the meaning of what he sees. However, he poses no threat to people, for he does not perceive them as part of a conspiracy. Besides, he believes he is superior to them.
.......At dwelling after supper, the father retires to bed while the mother looks at a photo album with old pictures. A photo falls out. Information technology is a picture of her German maid in Leipzig and her fianc�. The scene reminds her of places and events: Minsk, the Russian revolution, Berlin, and her firm in Leipzig. There is a picture of her son when he was four and one of Aunt Rosa, �a fussy, angular, wild-eyed one-time lady," the narrator says, "who had lived in a tremulous globe of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths�until the Germans put her to decease, together with all the people she had worried about."
.......Another photograph of her son shows him at age six, when he sketched pictures of birds with the feet and hands of humans and suffered bouts of insomnia. Another shows him at age eight, when he was afraid of wallpaper in their home and of a movie of a landscape. Still some other shows him at ten, when the family emigrated to America. She then remembers the fourth dimension when he was recovering from pneumonia and became delusional. No ane could reach him. He had slipped into a world of his own.
.......She accepted his fate and, the narrator says,
She idea of the endless waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her hubby had to suffer; of the invisible giants hurting her male child in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed, or wasted, or transformed into madness;of neglected children bustling to themselves in unswept corners; of cute weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to lookout the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as the monstrous darkness approaches........After midnight, her hubby staggers into the living room and says he is dying. She thinks his stomach is the problem and suggests that they call a md. But he wants no doctors.
.......�We must get him out of at that place quick," he says. �Otherwise nosotros'll be responsible. Responsible!"
.......Apparently he believes that if they do not bring their son home, he will kill himself and they will be to blame.
The telephone rings and a girl asks for Charlie. The female parent informs her that she has the wrong number. The father then tells the mother that they volition go their son the outset thing in the morn. The telephone rings again, and the same girls asks for Charlie. The mother over again tells her she has the wrong number, probably because she dialed a null instead of the alphabetic character O.
.......The two of them then take tea. The father examines the jars of jelly�apricot, quince, and other flavors. Once more the telephone rings.
.......(The narration ends hither. It is upwardly to the reader to translate the significant of the story. One possibility�based on imagery in the story�is that the third phone call is from the sanitarium, where a representative is virtually to inform the female parent and begetter that their son has successfully committed suicide. For additional information on the catastrophe, run across Signs, Symbols, and the Third Telephone call, below.)
.......The tone of the story is somber. The son is in conflict with his bizarre illness and the threatening signs and symbols that he sees. The parents are also in conflict with his disease, along with the institution housing him.
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Theme: Living Worlds Apart in the Same Globe
....... Life has cursed the elderly Jewish mother and father with suffering and hardship. They left Minsk (formerly a Russian urban center simply now a urban center in Republic of belarus) during or after the turbulent Russian Revolution and settled in Germany during the rising of fanatical anti-Semitism. One of the mother's relatives, Aunt Rosa, died at the hands of the Germans.
....... Meanwhile, the couple had their son to worry well-nigh. He was exhibiting frightening signs of a strange mental illness. After the couple emigrated to the U.s. when the boy was ten, they placed him in a special school where he encountered �ugly, vicious astern children." In time, after suffering a bout of pneumonia, he began living in a different reality, i beyond the accessibility of normal human beings. An article in a scientific periodical described his illness as a rare course of paranoia called referential mania. By this fourth dimension, the begetter�a successful businessman in the former country�was relying completely on his brother, Isaac, a thriving American denizen, for financial support. Life was hard.
....... Somewhen the couple committed their son to a sanitarium. Inside his heed, �invisible giants" were assaulting him, and the mother and father were powerless to assist him. So it was that the parents suffered in one reality while their son suffered in another reality. In his reality, clouds, trees, coats, running water, and wallpaper were conspiring against him�merely as the anti-Semites conspired against his parents in Europe and but equally poverty and other woes conspired confronting them in America.
....... Perhaps the greatest anguish of all, though, is that they cannot communicate with him, and he cannot communicate with anyone. And and so in that location are the mysterious phone calls in which the caller cannot go through to anyone either.
....... Man beings live in worlds autonomously while living in the same world. And it is not only mental decrepitude that separates them through differing perceptions of reality; it is besides political ideologies, economical systems, scientific theories, religious behavior, and civilisation.
Signs, Symbols, and the Third Telephone call
....... Ominous signs and symbols confront not only the son in his earth simply as well the mother and father in their world. Examples are their signs and symbols are the subway that loses �its life electric current," the report that their son has attempted suicide, a dying bird in a puddle, the girl crying on the shoulder of a woman, the photograph of the relative killed by the Nazis. Practice all of these foreshadow bad news at the end of the story�namely that the third telephone telephone call volition report that the son has succeeded in killing himself?
....... That upshot is a possibility. Nabokov leaves the interpretation upward to the reader.
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The climax occurs when the elderly couple decide to bring their son home to provide him meliorate care.Figures of Speech
.......Following are examples of figures of speech in the story.
Ingemination
Repetition of a consonant sound
things got chiliad islaid or g ixed upwardly so easilyMetaphorher f at- f aced f iance f ell out
that w equally w hen he drew w onderful birds
H e sipped noisily; h is f ace was f lushed
Comparing of different things without using like, as, or than
The underground railroad train lost its life current between two stations.Onomatopoeia
Comparison of the train to a living affairHe removed his new hopelessly uncomfortable dental plate and severed the long tusks of saliva connecting him to it.
Comparing of saliva to tuskscute weeds that cannot hibernate from the farmer and helplessly have to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake
Comparison of weeds to intelligent beings; comparing of the farmer's stoop to that of an ape (simian stoop)
Give-and-take that imitates a sound
the rustling of newspapersOxymoronwhere the rain tinkled in the dark
Contradictory words placed adjacent
a kind of soft stupor
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Study Questions and Essay Topics
- What is your interpretation of the ending of the story?
- How does modern medicine treat severely paranoid patients like the son?
- If you lot ask 10 artists to paint the aforementioned landscape, each will interpret and depict it differently. In your opinion, does each person in the world take a unlike perception of reality than other persons? If your answer is aye, explicate why one person's perception of reality is considered normal and another'southward�similar the son'due south�abnormal.
- The author identifies several persons by name, such equally Aunt Rosa, Dr. Solov, and Rebecca Borisovna? Why doesn't he identify by name the elderly couple and their son?
- Write an essay explaining what life may have been similar for the elderly couple in Federal republic of germany during the ascension of Adolf Hitler?
. Source: https://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/SignsSymbols.html
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