Invitation To Beheading Essay

In Nabokov’s “Invitation to Beheading” and Shalamov’s “An Individual Assignment,” totalitarian society represents a metaphorical prison that deprives the characters of their freedom and only through the renewal of their individual freedoms can the character’s break from their oppressors. In “Invitation to Beheading” Cincinnatus is imprisoned and sentenced to death for not fitting in with society and the opaqueness of his soul. Cincinnatus was always different throughout his life, but he managed to hide his strangeness. Eventually the masking of his unnatural behaviors subsides with his wife’s disloyalty and he is arrested and sentenced to death. In “An Individual Assignment” Dugaev is educated and is seen as a threat to the totalitarian

Cincinnatus has been shunned because of his differences ever since his childhood and the only person he has been able to connect with is his wife Marthe. Cincinnatus writes a letter to Marthe and is begging for an emotional connection. When she finally arrives to visit the prison, Cincinnatus strives to talk to her in private, but Rodion declares that the meeting is over before he gets his chance. Cincinnatus had been waiting for this moment for a long time, but he misses his one chance of an emotional connection before his execution. The theme of the lack of any emotional connections is also present in “An Individual Assignment.” The “cold, hunger, and sleeplessness rendered any friendship impossible” in the work camps. Friendships that were not formed before the conditions reached the extent that they were at the Kolyma camps were impossible because “no human emotion was left to a man” in the harsh conditions. Every man was fighting for their own survival in the work camps in Siberia leaving no energy or emotion left to develop relationships. It is clear that both characters are devoid of basic emotional connections and they are truly alone in their fight for