[Invitation to a Beheading is,] like many great works of fiction, richly suggestive, and to attempt to discredit the meanings that others have found within its pages would be pointless. Most recent studies stress the dichotomy of two modes of humanity suggested in the contrast between an innocent, cognizant, opaque Cincinnatus and his bumptious, transparent keepers…. [Most] readings tend to render Cincinnatus as being, from the beginning, a kind of innocent, perceptive, visionary soul—a man who "knows"—imprisoned and surrounded by fools and tyrants. Such a reading is rather two-dimensional, like the stage-prop trees which topple at the novel's end.

The novel may be read from another perspective in which Cincinnatus is the neophyte, the uninitiated man-child who does not "know," who has not come to grips with the terms of existence—life, time, and death—and who, during the period of his imprisonment, undergoes an elaborate and humorously absurd initiation ritual expressly designed and stage-managed by author Nabokov to enlighten Cincinnatus…. Nabokov creates this initiatory effect by periodically shifting from the predominant third person omniscient narration to a type of "participating" narrator who acts as though he were an invisible figure in the prison cell, observing everything and speaking directly to Cincinnatus, who cannot hear him…. At times the narrator adopts a mock-serious tone regarding Cincinnatus' suffering, viewing it as a necessary part of the learning process…. At other times, he sounds like a disappointed tutor…. These playful narrative asides by the author, together with the hero's absurd ordeals and the collapse of the scenic props at the end, convey the sense of a staged initiation, designed to transform the man-child into a man who knows. (pp. 28-30)

In the first of three major undulations of consciousness to be made by Cincinnatus, he abandons the excuse that he will not or cannot write because he does not know how much time he has left and has begun to record an instance of the kind of "time" he lives in. He even rebukes himself for his past fears…. Cincinnatus envisions a literal, physical escape, which indicates that he does not yet know what Humbert Humbert knew about "refuge" by the time he wrote the closing lines of his memoir, Lolita…. The concept that art is a better "refuge" from the poshlust world of reality than a "lush ravine in the desert" or "the shadow of an alpine crag" is central to Nabokov's aesthetic philosophy…. (p. 32)

Cincinnatus makes the second progression in consciousness where he comes to grips with the terms of his existence: life, time, and death….

This is the central moment of awakening for Cincinnatus; he has attained the alteration in consciousness which the absurd trials that the author has put him through were designed to achieve. He has come to realize that "like any other mortal" he does not know how much life he has left, and yet it is "all right": he is alive. This "radiant point," a "pearl ring embedded in a shark's gory fat," is the profoundly simple awareness that, in spite of all, he is.

If one sees absurdist works portraying "man's attempts to make sense for himself out of his senseless position in a world which makes no sense," Nabokov has created in Invitation to a Beheading a classic work of absurdist literature. The understanding which Cincinnatus attains is echoed by such absurdist writers as Camus and Ionesco. (p. 33)

Cincinnatus' fear of death returns to him from time to time, for Nabokov does not transform him into a hero of Romance, but Cincinnatus' sense of being and his creative imagination allow him to stand aloof and detached (like the "God of Creation" of Joyce's Stephen) from the remaining absurd performances…. (p. 35)

The explanation [of his "escape" at the ending] that seems most plausible is that Cincinnatus, the neophyte, the uninitiated man-child, has been subjected to an elaborate initiatory rite into the world of the absurd. In the process, he has been forced to abandon his childish demands to know the extent of his mortal life, as well as his excuse that the uncertainty of the number of his remaining life-days prohibits him from creating. The absurdity of his ordeal finally forces him back upon himself alone, and he comes, thereby, to an awareness of his own being: the "I am!" which releases in him a flood of memories and creativity. Having passed through the trials of the initiation, he attains selfhood, and the props of the ritual, no longer needed, collapse and disintegrate at the command of the Master of Ceremonies, author Nabokov. Cincinnatus' reward, expressed in the final sentence of the novel, is to be accepted into the fraternal community of those who have attained selfhood…. (pp. 37-8)