Symbols & Signs & Alice Out of Wonderland

It is easy to see the superficial meaning and feel the superficial sadness but nearly impossible to comprehend the multitude of layers within this unbearably sad story. There is so much mythological references in this story that it is hard to decipher all of it into a coherent manner.

To try and understand this work in a manner that makes sense to me, I decided to just break it down into sections and focus on the sections that interested me. The section that was most intriguing was that which centered around responsibility, tarot cards, and beauty. When looking at this section on the page, it doesn't seem to flow together until one looks at the themes instead of the location and layout of the words.

When bringing together "beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer", the Knave of Hearts, the Nine of Spades, and the King of Hearts, a theme is formed. This theme centers around responsibility, guilt, and understanding beauty that is rare and unique. The Knave of Hearts is a reference of from Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland. This character is only mentioned a few times but he symbolizes a thief as that is his understood role in Alice in Wonderland. The other cards are symbolic of fear and intellect, which is also a theme in Alice in Wonderland.

After working my way through all of this, it has occurred to me that Symbols and Signs is a version of Alice in Wonderland. However, we are not shown the story from the viewpoint of Alice but the Queen. The mother is the Queen that has lost her power. She can no longer control the symbols and significance of the world anymore. The fantasy that once ruled her world has become lost to reality. Each of the characters copes with this in different ways. The son (Alice) has become influenced with referential mania as a way to try and understand his world. However in their new reality, the son cannot understand that not everything has to have meaning. Thus by containing him to an asylum, "the beautiful weed cannot hide from the farmers". The weedy son was once the beautiful flower of Wonderland. The king (husband) is still living out trying to pardon the prisoners. It becomes his focus to free his son so that he can still be a beautiful weed.

Now, I haven't read anything else of Nabokov's but I have heard a lot about his work from Ashley and other classmates. The similarities between Symbols and Signs and Alice in Wonderland seems to be in line with the amazingly complex mythological and symbolic stories that he likes to tell. I truly think that this is a story of Alice in Wonderland without the Wonderland.