Pale Fire and Timon

[Jason Drake]

andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Not much of a push. Kinbote is attempting to steal Shade's limelight
> and his thunder.
> 
> But note that sun and moon are both thieves. Amongst others Shade
> could be seen as stealing from Pope and Gradus as attempting to
> `steal' Kinbote's life. What particularly intrigues me is the
> circularity of the thievery involved between the sun, moon and sea. Is
> Gradus the sea to Kinbote's moon and Shade's sun?  In the end Kinbote
> cheats them both since it is Shade who is resolved `into salt tears',
> not Kinbote.
> 
> It's quite complex, this 'circle of thievery' and it only seems resolvable via our interpretation of the narrator.  Obviously, the 
narrator is partly the Kinbote shown in the commentary.  It's the 
subtlety with which VN hides the rest of Kinbote that gives rise to our 
inability to pin down the associations with Timon and the roles of 
thievery.  I guess the next question is 'Does it really matter who is 
stealing what when everyone is stealing?'  Once the moral breakdown has 
occured, is it really worth tracing it all out, or is this merely 
playing the 'He started it game'?