مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - A Dystopian Study of Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov

Abstract :

Utopia meaning a good place in Greek is a term coined in the fictive book Utopia by Thomas More depicting an ideal place where people prosperously live. As a reaction and antithesis to this term, dystopia is defined as an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives in Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Hence, Invitation to a Beheading authored by Nabokov recounts a protagonist named Cincinnatus C. sentenced to death for the farcical crime (Morgan 2003: 281) of gnostic turpitude which has a sarcastic and awaits for his punishment in an eccentric cell. On waiting, Cincinnatus not knowing his executioner and when the execution will be held is introduced by the manager trying to be a friend of the protagonist. In this context, when studied from the dystopian point of view, the novel has a great numbers of dystopian characteristics. In this study, the term of dystopia and the characteristics of this term in Invitation to a Beheading will be argued.