Great Books: Symbols and Signs

From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada or Ardor and so many others, comes today’s selection, the short story Symbols and Signs. Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov was born in 1899 in St. Petersburg to a wealthy family of Russian aristocrats. Nabokov’s father was a government official who was assassinated for being on the wrong side of the Bolshevik revolution. It was at this point that Nabokov began his life as a refugee in England and Germany. In 1940, he came to the U.S. to teach literature at Wellesley and Cornell.

Nabokov had already written 9 novels in Russian before beginning to write in English in 1941. Due to the success of Lolita, Nabokov was able to move one last time, in 1961, to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

Nabokov’s writing is rich in lyricism, clever word play, and often includes a recurring theme of refugee-type characters, who stand apart from the dominant culture.

The story Symbols and Signs, first appeared in The New Yorker in 1948. In this short (5-page) short story, Mr. and Mrs. Sol prepare to visit their son, who is “incurably deranged in his mind” for his birthday. The Sol’s son, whose name may or may not be Charlie, appears to suffer from a “referential mania” in which every inanimate thing that occurs or exists around him appears to refer to him.

The compactness of the story seems to form a neat package, but the meaning appears elusive. What are the Symbols and Signs of the title? How do they affect Mr. and Mrs. Sol and their son? What has been resolved at the end of the story?

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