Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation To A Beheading

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Recommended: Conformity and non conformity

Invitation to a Beheading, written in 1959 comments on the blatant manipulation of reality in a totalitarian society, through conformity and the forced elimination of imagination. This poetic dystopian novel describes the surrealistic death-row experience of a man condemned to execution for the opacity of his mind in a world of a transparent souls. The dystopian construct depicted by Vladimir Nabokov highlights the flaws of the present, extrapolating them into the future, thus emphasising that the future is contingent on the present to a significant degree.

Nabokov emphasises the transgressive and adverse aspects of contemporary society through a totalitarian government’s desire for conformity. It is apparent to a significant extent that the most shocking aspect of the novel is that the protagonist Cincinnatus C’s denial of conformity leads to his execution, thus making the future contingent on the present. Even at a young age, Cincinnatus becomes aware of an opacity that sets him apart from the others as his soul was “opaque” not “transparent” like “everyone else’s”, however he was ignorant of the extreme social norms he was transgressing and learned to hide his deficiency. However this concealment of his peculiarity eventually fails, and Cincinnatus is imprisoned by the oppressive regime for the vague crime of “Gnostical turpitude”. Whilst he …show more content…

Therefore, it is apparent that the dystopian paradigm presented by Nabokov challenges the preconceived concepts of the future through exaggerations of conformity, forced abolishment of knowledge, and an individual’s metaphysical reality, thus highlighting that the future is contingent on the present to a significant

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