[Invitation to a Beheading is,] like many great works of fiction, richly suggestive, and to attempt to discredit the meanings that others have found within its pages would be pointless. Most recent studies stress the dichotomy of two modes of humanity suggested in the contrast between an innocent, cognizant, opaque Cincinnatus and his bumptious, transparent keepers…. [Most] readings tend to render Cincinnatus as being, from the beginning, a kind of innocent, perceptive, visionary soul—a man who "knows"—imprisoned and surrounded by fools and tyrants. Such a reading is rather two-dimensional, like the stage-prop trees which topple at the novel's end.
The novel may be read from another perspective in which Cincinnatus is the neophyte, the uninitiated man-child who does not "know," who has not come to grips with the terms of existence—life, time, and death—and who, during the period of his imprisonment, undergoes an elaborate and humorously absurd initiation ritual expressly designed and stage-managed by author Nabokov to enlighten Cincinnatus…. Nabokov creates this initiatory effect by periodically shifting from the predominant third person omniscient narration to a type of "participating" narrator who acts as though he were an invisible figure in the prison cell, observing everything and speaking directly to Cincinnatus, who cannot hear him…. At times the narrator adopts a mock-serious tone regarding Cincinnatus' suffering, viewing it as a necessary part of the learning process…. At other times, he sounds like a disappointed tutor…. These playful narrative asides by the author, together with the hero's absurd ordeals and the collapse of the scenic props at the end, convey the sense of a staged initiation, designed to transform the man-child into a man who knows. (pp. 28-30)
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