Writers in Exile and the Representation of Home: Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin and Ayn Rand's Anthem

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the different conceptions of home projected in Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Pnin, and Ayn Rand's novella, Anthem, and studies the interrelation between their lives and writings in exile in an attempt to locate each writer's true home and identity. As writers in exile, Nabokov and Rand translate their dilemma in their writings and shed the light on their personal opinions regarding home and identity. In result, the two novelists' use of personal memory in these two fictional works indicates their different conceptions of home, therefore their different cultural identities. It also indicates that they reacted to the experience of exile and displacement in opposing manners. Like his protagonist -Timofey Pnin- Nabokov remained a wanderer searching for a substitute home he could never find, while Rand took a new home and turned her back on the past just like her protagonist Equality 7-2521. This study gives a new insight in the sense that it allows the readers to understand how the writers in exile saw themselves, and not only how the world sees them as discussed by the majority of critical works. Both Nabokov and Rand are witnesses on the serious effects of exile on the exile's psyche, and more importantly on his identity. The dilemma of such writers is not that they tried to return physically to their homelands. Rather, it is in their search for the answers to such questions, such as who they are, and where do they belong.