Essay Questions

Why is Pnin a social outcast? Is this his fault?

Pnin just does not fit anywhere, and that is partly nature, partly nurture. He is basically one of life's square pegs but does not seem to realize it. He does not seem to understand what exactly he is supposed to fit into. This is actually a delightful ttait and makes him an entirely authentic character. He is not worried about being something that he is not in order to fit in, largely because he doesn't understand why he doesn't fit in the first place.

Pnin has a number of issues that make him an outsider. His spoken English is terrible, despite having beein in America for many years. He just hasn't picked up his new language and speaks a thick Russian hybrid of a language in an unintelligible way. He understands his homeland but not his new home and cannot work out how to bridge the gap between the two. This means that he misses social cues and has no desire to join in. He positions himself as "the weirdo in the office". He does have friends but in general social situations and particularly workplace situations mark him out as an outsider.

How does Pnin differ from other Nabokov protagonists?

Nabokov's heroes are generally sexually deviant in some way. He is best known for penning "Lolita" in which the "hero" was a man who enjoyed pedophilia. Pnin is nothing like this at all. He is an oddity, but not a pervert. He is a breath of fresh air in the Nabokov library. Whilst he is unlike other Nabokov heroes, he is much like Nabokov himself. Both men are given to obsessive compulsive behavior, both research and learn in the same way, and both present their knowledge similarly too. Rather than being a typical Nabokov protagonist, he is actually more typically Nabokov and a mirror image of the author himself.

There are over three hundred characters in the novel and only a handful of them like Pnin. Why do we, the reader, find ourselves liking him?

We see Pnin in comparison with the other characters and their dislikable nature only serves to make him more likable. He is unashamedly himself, primarily because he does not understand the social dances that are expected of him and that others perform around him. Most of the faculty hate him, but this is to be expected because they don't understand him and people have a tendency to hate what they cannot understand. With Pnin, what you see is what you get, but you probably don't understand what that is. What makes him impossible to like to the other characters in the book - his inability to fit in, his seeming obliviousness to the what is required from him, his rose-colored vision of everyone - is what makes us like him all the more. By contrast, those around him are largely unappealing.