29 pages • 58 minutes read
Vladimir NabokovSigns and Symbols
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1948A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Russian Expatriates
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains outdated references to psychiatric conditions, including the concept of “madness.” This section of the guide also discusses the Holocaust.
Like the family at the center of “Signs and Symbols,” Vladimir Nabokov was an immigrant from Russia to America. When the mother reviews the old photographs of her son during his upbringing, Nabokov’s life is closely reflected. Like the family, Nabokov lived through the Russian Revolution of 1917, which forced his family to flee their homeland for western Europe. Also like the family, Nabokov’s family then lived in Germany, before being forced to flee once again, this time due to the rise of the Nazi regime. The mother’s reminiscences about Aunt Rosa, who died in the Holocaust, echo the fate of one of Nabokov’s brothers, who died after remaining behind when most of the family emigrated from Europe to America in 1940.
The shared history between Nabokov and his characters grants him insight into the feelings of isolation, alienation, and emptiness that his writing often ascribes to immigrants like himself. The mother, for example, stoically faces the tragedies of her past and present, accepting that life means the “loss of one joy after another” (Paragraph 11). The father, in contrast, is beaten down by the degradation of having to rely on his brother Isaac for money but finds renewed optimism in his plans to restore his family by bringing his son home from the psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, the mother’s photo-centered reflections suggest that her son’s dissociative condition could partially stem from his upbringing amid the chaos and violence of their Russian expatriate experience.
Nabokov became a US citizen in 1945, though he permanently moved to Switzerland in 1961. During his time in the US, he was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University. It is notable that Nabokov and his family spoke fluent English and he experienced a trilingual childhood (also speaking French from a young age). Despite what may be a considered an advantage in his transition to the United States, his honest writing depicts the struggle he and many others experience as they adapt to a new country.
Rhetorical Context: Analysis Versus Over-Analysis
A professor of literature as well as a novelist and poet, Nabokov’s writing often displays a keen interest in the relationship between a reader and the piece of literature that they are reading. In the case of “Signs and Symbols,” this interest is reflected in the way that Nabokov invites the reader to share in the son’s neurosis.
The story is riddled with moments of potential symbolism, encouraging the reader to analyze the hidden meanings of seemingly inconsequential details. For example, the three playing cards—including the “knave of hearts” (Paragraph 20)—that slip to the floor, or the particular colors of the fruit jelly jars, or the son’s childhood drawings of “birds with human hands and feet” (Paragraph 10). These and other references seem too specific to not have deeper meaning, especially because there is otherwise no clear resolution to the narrative.
While there is certainly merit to reading the story closely, William Carroll and others point out that overly analytical readers may soon slip into the “[r]eferential mania” (Paragraph 7) that afflicts the son. Like him, they begin to suspect that “[e]verything is a cipher” and that they alone are capable of “decoding the undulation of things” (Paragraph 7). In attempting to mine the story for hidden significances, they instead reveal their own preconceptions, subjecting the story to their own thoughts and feelings (Carroll, William. “Nabokov’s ‘Signs and Symbols,’” in Carl R. Proffer, A Book of Things About Vladimir Nabokov. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1974).
Nabokov creates a puzzle, causing the reader to question how seriously they should approach his many invitations to analysis and symbolism. On one hand, a degree of subtle analysis is required to draw conclusions about the plot and the abrupt ending of the story. On the other hand, the reader must recognize the absurdity inherent in searching for answers that may not exist at all.
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