Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited Themes

Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited Themes

Memory and Reminiscence

Speak, Memory explores the way memory and reminiscence provide the author with the artistic power to defy time through his writing. He reconsiders and re-imagines episodes and sequences in his life, reflecting upon certain points in time from different points of time later in his life in a way that challenges the notion of linear chronological passages.

Family and Family Life

Nabokov celebrates family life, particularly in the years when he lived with his parents in St. Petersburg province before World War I. Speak, Memory ends with another celebration of family life, when he is a husband and father.

Freedom and Escape

Throughout Speak, Memory, Nabokov indicates his preoccupation with freedom and escape in both positive and negative terms. Allowed to seek it by his father and encouraged by his mother, the out of necessity, he and his family must escape for their lives. Though they retain their freedom outside Russia, events force them to...
(read more)