Nabokov's Unreliable Narration

Unreliable Narration
A constant disincentive that we face throughout the novel is the implausibility of our narrator, Humbert Humbert. Although the number of roots to this unreliability may be endless, the three main motives I will be focusing on are: 1) the possibility of our narrator being insane, 2) his habit of addressing the audience rather directly, and 3) his poignant language.
Since 1955, after the book had been published, the beginning of a controversial topic arose. Critics began to disassemble the extensive, ambrosial descriptions of young girls in the novel leaving them to debate whether Nabokov’s emotions toward the matter paralleled Humbert’s. In his afterword, “On a Book Entitled Lolita”, Nabokov reveals that he simply does

A relative definition informs us that insanity describes a state of mind that prevents normal perception, social interaction and behavior. From the beginning, it is evident that Humbert has some sort of issue. The majority of Humbert’s audience will automatically convict him of a number of crimes; rape, kidnapping, murder etc. Humbert begins to give signs of confusion when he tries to recall a memory acknowledging the fact that the information he will be giving is most certainly unreliable: “a murder with a sensational but incomplete unorthodox memory” (Nabokov 217). Humbert is also very secretive in his madness describing his emotions: “slippery self eluding, gliding into deeper and darker waters” (Nabokov 308). This is notifying the reader that although he is telling the events on his account, he plans to do it surreptitiously and without any will to reveal the whole story or the way things really happened. It is a warning gone unnoticed by the audience, explaining how much there really is left to figure out about our unreliable narrator. Another instance where we can find confusion in Humbert’s words is where he deranges events from two different settings in the book. Although it was a mistake, he continues to advise the audience of its importance: “such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be