The Oedipal motif
When Vladimir Nabokov decides to try not to influence his son's burgeoning imagination, he is finally mastering a couple important distinctions—the distinction between parent and child, and the distinction between subjective reality and objective reality. The failure to have made these correctly is like an Oedipal complex, shown in Nabokov's relationship to his mother, then his first love, then his girlfriend, not to mention his fleet of nannies and housemaids.
The paradox of luxury
One symbolic duality shown quite clearly is the symbolic difference between the World at War and Nabokov's young complacency. He blows the whole affair off with a kind of privilege that doesn't even realize that it's privilege. He thinks, "So what, that's on the other side of the country." But he also suffers from terrifying addictions and obsessions. It seems his insulation and privilege was a double-edged sword—half beautiful and sublime, half horrifying and lonely.
The paradoxical nurse
One of Nabokov's many babysitters was a nursemaid whom he hated for her structure and authority, but who held a special key to young Vladimir's heart: she could teach him the French language. His love for language won him over to her, and suddenly he realized that even people he doesn't like are actually people who could be loved dearly.
Pictures of paradise
The motif of luxury serves a particular role in describing Vladimir's understanding of the world. Part of the sublime tone of the autobiography comes from the strange state of paradise Vladimir seems to have been raised in. His father's successful career meant that he could have maids and servants, that he could vacation in the south of France, that he had the time and luxury of learning languages and reading—it's almost like the young Buddha locked in his lavish cage.
The symbol of OCD
This is not an attempt to undermine the literal truth of Nabokov's claim that he suffered from obsession and compulsive desire, but the reader might note that the disorder serves a role in the book as a symbol. It symbolizes the dark side of his religious addiction to beauty and order. For one thing, it left him with an obsessive romantic urge that made him something of a heartbreaker (which is a fun sounding thing, but in real life is quite horrifying and misogynistic). It also made him the kind of person that went out into nature and stole animals to keep for himself. There are elements of horror in this description. It seems he paid for his genius with the price of his own peace of mind.
