In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita delusional love encourages violent actions. The protagonist Humbert Humbert is infatuated with prepubescent Dolores Haze. This vulgar love is based in possession and control, yet Humbert does not feel that he is in any way hurting young Lolita, also known as Dolores, and he feels that because he loves her there is no wrongdoing. By believing that she loves him back in the same way that he loves her, he is setting himself up for tragedy. When she is taken from him by an unknown predator Humbert embarks on a multi-year long journey in search of his lost nymphet. When he finally finds Dolores, barefoot and pregnant, she tells him of her stay with a relative named Clare Quilty whom she fell in love with. At Dolly’s home Humbert begs for her to return to him. Only when she denies him this he realizes the traumatic effects he has had on the girl because of his delusional love for her. By realizing that he, all along, was the villain of the story, he feels that he needs to murder Quilty in order to do right by Dolly, as a type of twisted …show more content…
This statement, regardless of its ephemeral nature, is glazed with morality. Humbert is feeling the heavy anvil of loneliness on his chest, but he only cares how he feels, not even tracing the thought of Lolita’s wellbeing. When Humbert falls ill and is not able to pick up Lo on time she is taken from the hospital by a man masquerading as her Grandfather. After this Humbert proceeds to tirelessly look for his beloved Lo for several years until he receives a letter from her discussing her pregnancy and monetary issues with her new husband. This pushes Humbert to track down Lolita by utilizing the clues from the letter to find
Lolita, by Vladamir Nabokov is a controversial book that elaborately represents and forces the reader to deal with a pedophiles obsession with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. As the reader finishes reading Lolita, he must establish a meaning for the novel which hinges heavily upon whether or not he should forgive Humbert for his rape of Lolita and for stealing her childhood away from her. This rape is legally referred to as a statutory rape because Humbert is having sex with Lolita who is under the age of consent. Humbert also figuratively rapes Lolita of her childhood and a normal teenage life. This decision to forgive Humbert will rely upon Humbert's words as he realizes what he has done to Lolita. In order for the reader to be able to forgive Humbert he must determine if Humbert is truly sorry for his actions.
After looking past its controversial sexual nature, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita can be read as a criticism of the capitalist system. Nabokov uses the relationship between the novel's narrator, Humbert Humbert, and the novel's namesake, Lolita, as an extended metaphor to showcase the system's inherent exploitive nature in a way that shocks the reader out of their false consciousness, by making the former a man in the position of power - a repulsive, manipulative pedophile — and the latter a young female victim — as well as a spoiled, vapid, unruly child. Each is to the other nothing more than a commodity — Lolita being the perfect consumer and Humbert Humbert being a man of privilege who views others only as objects to be used, or consumed.
Once a loving, understanding, and supporting relationship, the friendship between Mistress and Lina begins to deteriorate after the death of Jacob. Mistress assumes a role of power over Lina, when she states, “outside sleeping is for savages,” (Morrison 186) like Lina. As a result, Lina begins to lose some of her control over her will to fight against how the world views her. Lina feels “a peculiar sensation…of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (W.E.B. DuBois 2). By forcing Lina recognize her status as a “savage,” Lina recognizes the idea coined by W.E.B. DuBois- “double consciousness.” She “continue[s] to do her work carefully, calmly but Scully disagreed, said she was simmering…the skin near breaking, needing quick removal, cooling” (Morrison 170). Lina attempts to remain level-headed, by trying to mix together the “savage” and her Native American roots. However, the overwhelming pressure of double consciousness causes her to “simmer.” As Scully states the “skin near breaking” Lina’s identity threatens to break free from her grasp. Lina spirals towards her final breaking point and eventual denouement—no longer able to find her true
The story of Lolita is one of the most controversial tales ever written in the 1950’s. Classified as an erotic novel, Lolita portrays the relationship between a middle aged professor, Humbert Humbert and a young adolescent, Dolores Haze. This story has a strong sense of allusions in reference to what is considered right and wrong in sexuality and psychiatry. As summarized through Spark Notes, it is said that, “Humbert’s passion for Lolita defies easy psychological analysis, and throughout Lolita, Humbert mocks psychiatry’s tendency toward simplistic, logical explanations,” (Spark Notes, 2015). Humbert is a character who is very intelligent but has a psychological vulnerability to Lolita. His desire for her is described as love but is also portrayed
Humbert Humbert, who had quite a fortunate childhood, falls in love with a girl by the name of Annabel Leigh. She and him started off as friends which eventually escalades into a sexual relationship but never consummate due to her death at age 13 from Typhus. This traumatizes Humbert Humbert and strangely triggers an attraction to young girls for the rest of his life. To accommodate his loneliness, he eventually marries a woman that has child-like characteristics so he can have somewhat of a normal life. After his uncle passes away, he has been left with an inheritance but only if he shows interest in his uncle’s business. When he presents this to his wife that he must travel to America, she confesses that she has been having an affair with another man, a taxi driver. He travels, lonesome, to America and joins the household of a widow, Charlotte Haze, and her twelve year-old daughter, Dolores Haze, whom which goes by the name of Lolita. Instantly, he realizes he has found the one, the one that will make Annabel become a person of the past and let him deliberately try to find a way to be with Lolita without her mother finding out. When Charlotte ships Lolita off to summer camp, she confronts Humbert Humbert, informing him of her feelings for him. She suggests that they either get married or he find another place to stay. Through panicked thoughts, he decides to marry Charlotte in order to stay near Lolita. When Charlotte discovers Humbert Humbert’s diary confessing his hatred towards Charlotte and his infatuation with her daughter, she runs out of the house, threatening to leave and expose him but instantly dies from being hit by a car. He arrives at Lolita’s summer camp to pick her up and spend the night at the Enchanted Hunter...
Many critics question how far an author can detach themselves from the morality of their main characters--especially when exhibited in such a convincing portrayal of first person narration. However, the narratorial unreliability that is observable in Humbert Humbert is not product of Nabokov’s literary carelessness or likeness, but rather of his sharp, biting sense of irony. The antisocial behavior of Humbert Humbert masterfully reflects many of the antisocial behaviors occurring on a societal level during the respective time period (Maddox). The medley of irony present in Lolita extends from dramatic to situational and circumvents back again. Nabokov’s personal involvement vanishes from a perceived immoral perspective to a deep well of literary, witty involvement that relies on abstract thinking and considerate
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
He calls it Mcfate. In fact, that Mcfate is the name of Lolita’s classmate and he imagines that control his destiny. He says “I had actually seen the agent of fate. I had palpated the very flesh of fate and its padded shoulder” (Nabokov 103). Humbert decides to take Lolita from camp Q and tell her that her mother sick and she stays in the hospital. He takes Lolita to the Enchanted Hunters hotel where he for the first-time rapes Lolita by giving her sleeping pills. Also, number 342 repeats more than once and its weird. It is the street number of the Haza home and the room number of the Enchanted Hunters hotel. There something also strange for me when Lolita says to Humbert “You Chump” she said, sweetly smiling at me “you revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you’ve done to me, I ought to call the police and tell them you raped me. Oh, you dirty, dirty old man.” (Nabokov 141). If that is ok for her! Does she really know that Humbert raped her or she just jokes? Humbert tells her that her mother died when she asks to see her. She cries a lot, he buys toys and clothes for her to make her happy. They stay in another hotel. Humbert says “At the hotel we had separate room, but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see she had absolutely nowhere else to go.” (Nabokov 142). Humbert takes Lolita away from everyone she knows and makes power over her thus she always need
Solipsism, which is the theory that one’s mind is the only entity certain to exist, has various moral implications that allow people with solipsistic views of their world to justify their mistreatment of others. In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert Humbert, a self-proclaimed murderer and lover of “nymphets”, demonstrates a solipsistic worldview which causes him to see everything in relationship to himself, creating new personas for various characters and only narrating the series of events from his perspective. Humbert’s solipsism makes him view everything that happens to him solely from his point of view, as he believes his mind is all that exists, therefore making the events that transpire solely acts of fate and the people he encounters figments of his imagination. Humbert’s solipsism compromises the reliability of his narration, as he describes characters exclusively from his point of view by stripping them of their individuality and describing them solely in relation to himself; Humbert’s tendency to write exclusively from his own point of view forces the reader to accept the series of events he presents as the truth, without any external input, allowing him to completely control the reader’s perception of him and the events of the novel.
With his 1955 novel Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov invents a narrator by the name of Humbert Humbert who is both an exquisite wordsmith and an obsessive pedophile. The novel serves as the canvas upon which Humbert Humbert will paint a story of love, lust, and death for the reader. His confession is beautiful and worthy of artistic appreciation, so the fact that it centers on the subject of pedophilia leaves the reader conflicted by the close of the novel. Humbert Humbert frequently identifies himself as an artist and with his confession he hopes “to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets” (Nabokov, Lolita 134). Immortalizing the fleeting beauty and enchanting qualities of these preteen girls is Humbert Humbert’s artistic mission
He directly addresses the readers in a way that frames the book to be a pseudo-court case. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied” (9). This is a rhetorical strategy that shows that his intentions are not just to profess his love for Lolita to readers, but for readers to accept that his love for her was just and moral. He wants to feed readers his version of events to mask the true nature of them. Humbert’s narration famously begins as “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta” (9). He goes on to describe how Lolita is his special name for her, that “in [his] arms she was always Lolita” and not just her given name, Dolores (9). Right away Humbert sets to portray his feelings for her as intensely emotional. Even the action of saying her name is a passionate experience for him, trying to make readers believe that his attraction for her is not as much physical as it is emotional. However, readers can see that he is attracted to her because she is the most perfect form of what he famously coins as a “nymphet.” He discusses at length how her prepubescent shape is what he lusts over, and in
Throughout 'Lolita', there are many clues that the narrator is being unreliable. This is touched upon through a variety of facets about Humbert's character, which the audience picks up on as the story progresses.
The first reference to lesbian love in Indian Literature was in the Rig Veda. According to Gita Thalani there were legislations against lesbian love, validating only procreative sex. The code of Manu contains the punishments meted out to women engaging in homosexual acts, a virgin girl who engages in love-making with another deserves the punishment of being fined and beaten. Thus we see that lesbianism and homosexuality were not only present in ancient India, but were also suppressed and punished.
There is a difference between the real love you have for someone and the unhealthy obsession you have over a person. In Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov the main character, Humbert, has an obsessive disorder. He is fascinated with nymphets, who are young girls between the age of nine and fourteen. The novel follows the journey of Humbert as he pursues young women.. Humbert completely neglects any feelings that he has toward the older women and even seems to be oblivious to his own aging. He is not only physically obsessed with nymphets but he is also emotionally obsessed. His obsession consumes him and he has little control over his feelings and impulses and does not think of the morality of his actions. When Lolita is taken from Humbert, he goes insane and becomes willing to give up his life for her. Humbert illustrates his obsessiveness through his word choice and also his manipulative personality. Humbert attempts to cover up the disturbing truth of his obsession with the nymphets. Through the characterization of Humbert, it is illustrated that one’s obsessive behavior can lead one to
the narrator tells Humbert had always a hard time in relationships because of the fact of his