50 pages • 1 hour read
Vladimir NabokovInvitation to a Beheading
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1935A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Irrational Bureaucracy
Vladimir Nabokov claimed that, at the time he wrote Invitation to a Beheading, he had not read Kafka’s work. Nevertheless, Invitation to a Beheading shares many of Kafka’s own preoccupations, especially his interest in bureaucracies, which he often portrays as nightmarishly complex, absurd, or illogical. Cincinnatus C., as the victim of one such irrational bureaucracy, is accused of “gnostical turpitude,” a vague but apparently very serious crime—so serious, in fact, that it is unsayable; the judge who condemns Cincinnatus does so via traditional “circumlocutions,” creating further vagueness and uncertainty around the charge. Cincinnatus is sentenced to death for a crime he does not understand, punished by a bureaucracy that values tradition over his life and over any semblance of judicial integrity. Most maddening for Cincinnatus, however, is that he is not told the date of his execution. The system is so inefficient that his jailors admit that even his jailors admit they do not know when he will be executed.
The bureaucratic process is respected above all else, even though it makes little sense. The meaning and the motivation behind the city’s traditions are lost, but they are still followed meticulously. Ironically, Pierre has a bout of food poisoning as a consequence of one bureaucratic formality, the dinner at the city fathers’ house. His body suffers as a direct result of his desire to follow the administrative expectations of his position as executioner. This is an example of the way in which these bureaucratic traditions threaten to derail the society, making them seem even more absurd. Yet all the characters, not just Cincinnatus, are trapped inside convention.
Eventually, the day of Cincinnatus’s execution arrives. His life is as beholden to bureaucracy as ever, even when this bureaucracy makes no sense. He is granted a last wish, but he must select one from a preapproved list. Even this list is absurd, because Rodrig has altered it to include the option to thank all the jailers. This interference in the bureaucratic process greatly angers Pierre, who demands adherence to the administrative process at all times. Cincinnatus can only watch on in silence as the end of his life is administrated according to a bureaucratic process. Cincinnatus’s mental state catches up to the absurdity of the world right at the moment when his head is removed. In death, he is freed from the prison of absurdity and the state’s irrational bureaucracy.
The Brittleness of Reality
The world presented in Invitation to a Beheading is gradually coming apart at the seams. After his death sentence, Cincinnatus is imprisoned in the fortress, a robust and intimidating physical representation of the government’s power and authority. Even this formidable structure is not quite solid, however. The walls throb and move. The fortress layout is confusing and changeable, to the point where Cincinnatus cannot navigate the corridors in any reasonable manner. After leaving his cell, he loops back around and finds himself in an unexpected location. The layout of the physical space is as absurd and unreliable as the bureaucracy and the society itself. When Cincinnatus walks the halls, he finds that he is moving in circles. When he moves through Pierre’s tunnels, he nearly escapes by accident when trying to return to his cell. Even little details—such as the light fixings being off center and the flowers placed off center on the table—hint at a physical world in which reality is not reliable, dependable, or trustworthy. The more time Cincinnatus spends in the fortress and the more he is subjected to the whims of his oppressive government, the more he feels as though reality itself is coming apart.
In this unreliable physical space, even something as seemingly certain as identity cannot be trusted. Identity is as brittle as reality itself, as Cincinnatus feels the ebb and flow of identity around him. Rodion becomes Rodrig, the characters seemingly blending together across paragraphs, as the narration itself cannot reliably discern between them. Pierre presents himself as a fellow prisoner, but he is actually an executioner. The relationships and personal dynamics of the characters shift in such a way that Cincinnatus cannot trust anything or anyone around him. Regardless of whether these brittle realities exist in Cincinnatus’s head or whether they are imposed on him by a vindictive bureaucracy, the effect is the same. No certainty is possible in a world in which physical boundaries might shift or collapse at any moment.
Cincinnatus would like to live in a world he can trust, a world where he can rely on something as simple as the date of his own execution. But such a world is denied to him. Reality, in his experience, is brittle and frail. After being subjected to the Irrational Bureaucracy of the state, Cincinnatus finally embraces the brittleness of his reality, even as that reality begins to collapse around him. His prison cell seems to disintegrate as he leaves it, and as he is beheaded he feels himself splitting into two selves. At the moment of his execution, reality breaks apart completely for Cincinnatus. He becomes one with the confusion of the world around him, freed from his brittle corporeal form.
The Duality of Life Under Totalitarianism
A sense of duality pervades Invitation to a Beheading. The novel uses dualities to reinforce its social critique and to reflect on the nature of life under totalitarian rule. The novel suggests that totalitarianism confuses categories and distinctions, creating a “jumble” of information that is difficult, if not impossible, to understand.
At the beginning of the novel, Cincinnatus is transitioning from freedom to imprisonment and coming to terms with the nature of this fundamental duality. He is subject to the whims of a totalitarian system that not only limits his movement but that also consigns him to the literal fringes of the society—the fortress outside the town. However, the novel confuses the distinction between freedom and confinement. Cincinnatus may be the only prisoner in the fortress, but the other characters are imprisoned in their own ways—bound to tradition, bureaucracy, habit. In addition, Cincinnatus is arguably the only character who becomes free, and, ironically, it is through his imprisonment and execution that he achieves freedom. For the first time, he can move freely through the world, unbeholden to his jailers, the state, even reality itself.
Another key duality is the split between objective and subjective experiences of reality. While Cincinnatus might have previously believed in some objective reality, he gradually realizes that no such thing exists. Everyone in the society dictates their immediate reality according to their individual wants and desires. Rodrig, for example, wields genuine authority in his role as prison director, and he has constructed a system that adheres to his own expectations about how a prison should be run, which is for his amusement. When Cincinnatus does not adhere to these expectations, he is punished. Ironically, in Cincinnatus’s quest to find an objective, reliable reality, he is increasingly driven toward his own subjective, highly idiosyncratic understanding of existence. Rather than a single, objective reality, Cincinnatus learns to embrace a world composed of intersecting and competing subjective realities, where rules can be written and rewritten on a whim.
The fundamental duality that governs the narrative is that of life and death. Cincinnatus exists in an absurd liminal space; he has been sentenced to die but he does not know when. The continued delay of his execution means that he cannot enjoy what little life he has left because he does not know how much time or thought he can dedicate to any given activity. Ironically, his life is governed by death, while the postponement of his death only serves to remind him of how much he is wasting his life. The dualities throughout Invitation to a Beheading underscore the absurdity, unreliability, and bitter irony of life under totalitarian rule.
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