Portrayal of Exile and Marginalization: A Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Select Novels

ABSTRACT

Vladimir Nabokov is a great American novelist who suffered traumatic experiences with the emergence of Bolshevik Revolution of Russia. The political uncertainties; chaos and disorder ushered in by the Russian revolutionaries forced Nabokov to flee from Russia and migrate to Europe with his wife to save his life. Vladimir Nabokov witnessed the mass killing of the innocent people by gas vans and the policy of the Purge launched by the totalitarian regime. Nabokov found himself trapped in the abyss of darkness; the darkness of war, oppression, exile and multiple displacements. The Tsarist monarchy in Russia compelled him to leave his homeland and settled down in Berlin for a short span of time. The socio-cultural perspective has been taken in this study to explore the various cross-currents and ethnic pluralities experienced by Nabokov in Russia, Europe and in America. The study explores the philosophical vision of author and traumatic experiences, physical danger, psychological anguish and death depicted in his select novels. The present study investigates the moral strength of Vladimir Nabokov and his protagonists in confronting the darkest and most dazzling hours of existence. In his Speak Memory he narrates his harrowing experiences of life; his lost childhood home, a fabulous inheritance. He witnessed war and revolution; his father was killed, his mother died and the entire family was in the grip of abject poverty, depression and forced exile. The Nazis were decimating the Jews from Europe and his wife was a Jew. He had to move from one country to the other for survival and he evoked in his novels the feelings of pain, anguish and death. The paper will study exile and marginalization and its impact on the characters in the select novels of the writer.

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