The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Literary Elements

Short Stories, Short Fiction

The stories are generally set in Germany and France, after World War Two

The narrator is generally the author and the point of view is Nabokov's own.

The majority of the stories have a tone of levity and playfulness despite their subject matter in some cases; Nabokov is playing with the reader. However there is a more somber tone in some of the stories most notably "Signs and Symbols".

The protagonist in "The Razor" is the barber, the antagonist his client, who used to be a member of the pro-Bolshevik Red Army.

The major conflict providing the background for many of the stories is World War II.

The climax of "The Potato Elf" is Fred's steamy night spent with another man's wife, and his subsequent discovery that she only slept with him as an act of passive aggression against her husband.

The dying bird, the pack of cards that falls and the train that suddenly stops without ever reaching its destination all foreshadow the suicide of the son in "Signs and Symbols".

The description of the two Nazis in "The Leonardo" is an understatement in itself because despite the accurate representation of the two Germans drinking together, it seems impossible that two idiots like them could be part of a mechanical plan to annihilate the Jews, and so the story understates the horror of the events of Nazi Germany and also the capacity of the Germans for intelligence and strategizing.

""The Return of Chorb" alludes to the myth of Orpheus in the Underworld.

The imagery provided in "The Leonardo" of the two Germans drinking together enables the reader to not only visualize them but to hear them and probably smell them also, given that they were practically covering themselves in beer.

The barber in "The Razor" is giving his client a very close shave; he is screaming and being verbally abusive at the man he has recognized as being the commander of the Bolsheviks who sentenced him to death, but the more abusive his language becomes, the gentler the shave he is giving the man.

There is a parallel between Nabokov's feelings about the Germans during World War Two and his portrayal of German men in "The Leonardo".

No specific examples.

In "Signs and Symbols" the trees are said to be gesticulating, but this is not really possible since gesticulation is a human form of communication and therefore not something that trees would really do.