The Straitjacket of Normality: The Downfall of an Autistic Chess Genius in The Defense

Abstract: This article approaches Nabokov’s novel The Defense as the story of the highly problematic development of an autistic boy into a young man. The protagonist Luzhin is an extremely talented chess player, but his “otherness” is neither recognized nor understood. Neglected as a child and adolescent, he grows up to be an unworldly young adult. He becomes a chess grandmaster and one of the strongest players in the world but is unfit for life and enters a downward spiral of delusions and psychotic behavior. This article illustrates how literary works may contribute to our understanding of the subjective dimension of neurodiverse conditions, such as autism. This ties in with the recent interest in a phenomenological approach to neuro-diversity, an approach that focuses, not so much on finding (neuro)biological explanations, but on gaining a better understanding of “what it is like” to live with a neurodiverse condition. Furthermore, The Defense shows us what can happen when the world is unable or unwilling to adequately recognize, accept, and support the otherness of highly talented young people, but instead stigmatizes them and tries to normalize them.