Rhetorical Devices In Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Random house, 1955.

The novel Lolita tells the story of the obsessive Humbert Humbert and his travels across the states with his step-daughter (Dolores, a.ka. Lolita), as he tries to force her to be his mistress. The novel starts with Humbert moving into Dolores’s mother’s home. In a turn of terrible events, Dolores’s mother dies and Humbert takes that as an opportunity to, in a way, kidnap Dolores, and drag her with him on the road. The author, Vladimir Nabokov, studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College in Cambridge and has written several other books, as well as a myriad of short stories. Nabokov writes in a very specific way; a way that appeals to pathos. The book is written purposefully to make Humbert seem like the victim. He starts with the detailed and romanticized story of his childhood and his first love. When he starts the book this way, readers are more likely to feel for Humbert. One rhetorical device Humbert’s character utilizes often is repetition. He’s writing this

One of these novels is Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. She relates the struggles of Dolores Haze to her and her students living under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Nafisi establishes her credibility with her professor credentials and her years of teaching at the University of Tehran. She definitely appeals to pathos by sharing her students (and her own) thoughts on the novel, especially in relation to their own lives, “Again and again as we discussed Lolita in that class, our discussions were colored by my students’ hidden personal sorrows and joys.” Nafisi utilizes a metaphor for Dolores’s character, comparing her to the “half alive butterfly pinned to the wall.” This source could be seen as biased, as she is putting her very personal opinions into the text, and including those of her