Signs and Symbols

It is introduced to us in the first sentence that there is this couple "they" who knew this person, their son, "who was incurably deranged in his mind." We are told that this young man is disturbed and unbalanced. "Man-made objects were to him either hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant activity that he alone could perceive, or gross comforts for which no use could be found in his abstract world." This sentence contains an abundant vocabulary while describing how man-made objects scare him or offend him in some way, and since it was his birthday his parents were troubled with the thought of what they should get him. They settled on fruit jellies--something that usually someone wouldn't desire for a birthday present but we know from the second sentence, "desires he had none."

The climax occurs when the father suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night crying that he couldn't sleep. His wife tries to calm him down and find out what is wrong with him but all he cares about is gutting their son out of the place. Through just a short dialogue Nabokov shows how uncomfortable the father felt with his son in this place and he didn't want to be responsible for anything if he hadn't taken him out of the place right away. 

The phone call. Who is this lady that is calling for Charlie? And who is Charlie? Charlie must be their son. When the mother hung up the phone with the girl who was asking for Charlie, she said to her husband "It frightened me." My thought is that it was scary for her to have someone calling for her son while he was in the place for crazy people. The phone rang again and it was the same voice who was still asking for Charlie but mother hung up again on her. They got on with their time drinking their midnight tea and examined the jelly jars. The ending like is really interesting to me and just kept me on the edge of my seat, "He had got to crab apple when the telephone rang again." 

Vladimir Nabokov paints his picture well of what is going on but also uses detailed and vivid words to draw the reader in. We are given a little bit of background of the mother and father but also about their extended family including how they live on the husband's brother's money and how Aunt Rosa was killed by the Germans. How the beginning was going, it never had me suspect what was going to happen in the end.