Unforgettable Homesickness

In the age of turbulence, which is full of confliction, revolution and literary camp division, the exile life changed Nabokov’s literature orbit again and again. But at the same time, he also unearthed a theme—— "exile".The record of exiles’ images almost run through his writing career. He puts the sharp eyes on his compatriots in exile, and the readers can vaguely find Nabokov’s shadow in his works as well, which is cast on these books——Mary, The gift and Pnin.The commentary on Nabokov’s novels at home and abroad has given us an important "reliance" to analyze the "exile" theme. So I choose Mary, The gift and Pnin as the reading texts. In this paper, I regard "exile" and "homesickness" as the main tone and treat the "image" and "marginal people" as the theoretical support so that we can study the theories of "the prison of time" and "the other world". In the end, we can see an evolution chain of exiles’ images, which is composed of Ganin, Fyodor, and Pnin.The first chapter is based on Mary. As a young man in exile, Ganin lives in anguished. He makes himself in the depths of memory and he always looks for a chance to escape the reality life. "Mary" is a symbol of his memory about the motherland and good future, but the train "tells" him every day and night that he has fallen into the "prison" of time, and he can never escape from the fate of exile.The second chapter is based on The gift. I regard Fyodor as a represent middle-aged man in exile. "Butterfly" is throughout the full text. "Butterfly" not only makes Fyodor recall his childhood memory with his family in Russia, but also causes him to think about literature. I start from the details to find out how he parodies the literature "virtue" and feel the gift of life. In the end, Fyodor gradually grows into a real artist for art’s sake. At this stage, the exiles’ thoughts become more mature, and they can break free from pessimism mood little by little so that they will have a deeper comprehension of life.The third chapter is based on Pnin to analyze the represent image of elder exiles. We can see the entire life of Pnin ——he was a promising young scholar and now he is trapped by life, so he can only gain some solace from books to miss Russia. At the end of this work, however, Nabokov makes Pnin go towards to the "other side" instead of "here".I use the theory of "marginal people" in the fourth chapter. In this point, we can see the flee instincts from Ganin, the personality consciousness from Fyodor, a spiritual home built by Pnin.By means of the sorting out above four chapters, in the conclusion part, I combine the exiles and the theory of "marginal people" together, and I also reiterate the importance of "image" for studying Nabokov’s novel theory, as well as his study attitude.