Reflections

Reflections—be they in mirrors, windows, what have you—are almost as ubiquitous in Pnin as those rascally squirrels. We'll forgive you for not noticing, but there are a couple of things about the way reflections are depicted in this novel that mean they deserve more than a passing glance.

Perception, Time, and Memory

If you weren't meticulously jotting down every single moment that potentially could have symbolic meaning (um, not that we do that, of course), the first time you might have noticed the attention given reflections was when Victor appeared. He's all about art, and in particular about reflections and distortions, which makes sense because those are some of the hardest things to replicate on canvas.

But there's something extra curious in this passage: "In the chrome plating, in the glass of a sun-rimmed headlamp, he would see a view of the street and himself comparable to the microcosmic version of a room (with a dorsal view of diminutive people) in that very special and very magical small convex mirror that, half a millennium ago, Van Eyck and Petrus Christus and Memling used to paint into their detailed interiors, behind the sour merchant or the domestic Madonna." (4.5.4)

So he's hallucinating? Not unless you can hallucinate fine art. These paintings are considered some of the very first depictions of mirrors in art. Not only that, but also these are no ordinary mirrors.

All of these mirrors have something more than meets the eye. For example, the mirror in the Van Eyck painting shows two people who would not otherwise be visible in the painting. The painting by Petrus Christus has a mirror that doesn't show the main scene at all, and actually contrast the virtue in that scene with a depiction of pride and greed in the world of the mirror. Finally, the Memling painting is possibly the weirdest because it depicts a world that could not possibly exist as the two paintings are portrayed.

Okay great, so these are some pretty weird paintings, but what do they have to do with Pnin? By now, you should know that nothing in this book is unintentional. So we have these mirrors that do not simply reflect reality, like we would imagine them to. And we have this kid who's obsessed with looking at painting and things through distorted reflections.

And then we have Pnin.

The narrator says: "He was beloved not for any essential ability but for those unforgettable digressions of his, when he would remove his glasses to beam at the past while massaging the lenses of the present."(1.5) So finally we get the link between reflections (glasses and lenses) and memory (the past and the present).

It's not too far of a jump to connect these reflections of memory with Pnin's sometimes-distorted view of the past. Essentially, it's saying that just like the strange mirrors in these paintings and Victor's distorted images, Pnin's view of the past and sometimes even the present isn't exactly a simple reflection of the truth. It's been changed to mean something that was never really "real."

Reflecting the Bowl

So we have this beautiful blue bowl made out of glass. It's connected symbolically to those dangerous squirrels, but it's also got a link to Victor and to reflections. So what does that mean?

You could perhaps imagine that the glass represents the danger of the squirrels being transformed into a bright and shiny future for Pnin. Or maybe it is a representation of Pnin's entire life and memory, distorted and made into a beautiful shiny object that is much nicer than the life full of trauma that he has actually led.

Either way, it's pretty certain that If Pnin had actually shattered the bowl it probably wouldn't have been a good sign. We would guess that the end of that bowl would have been the end of Mr. Timofey Pnin. Not that his not shattering it is that much better—but still, it reflects that there's at least some glimmer of hope left in his life.