Pale Fire

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss suicide and mental health conditions.

John Shade and Charles Kinbote are bound together by an obsession with the afterlife, though this manifests in very different ways. The poem “Pale Fire” is Shade’s attempt to wrestle with the nature of the afterlife in the wake of his daughter’s death, while Kinbote is dealing with life in exile from his native Zembla. “Pale Fire” is a deeply personal poem for Shade. Not only does he describe the night of his daughter’s suicide in detail, but he examines the various ways he has come to terms with the unknowability of what happens after death. He is an orphan who has lived in the shadow of grief for a long time, and he has often expressed his grief through poetry. His seizures and heart attack have allowed him to glimpse something of a world beyond life. He has lectured at the Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter, an institutional attempt to provide practical guidance for those who are dead. Even during his daughter’s life, her fascination with ghosts and the supernatural opened up an interest in what might happen after a person dies.