The most obvious feature of Lolita, and the main reason for its staying power, is Humbert Humbert's striking, complex, and enchanting prose. Humbert diverts the reader from his ugly actions, as a pedophile, with his pretty words. He goes beyond ordinary prettiness; his constant wordplay and verbal games force the reader to concentrate on language rather than on him. With his ability of enchanting words and wordplay, he develops the ability to freeze time and in turn freeze Lolita in her “nymphet” state. When Humbert describes Lolita playing tennis in minute detail, he succeeds in locking her into endless nymphet state. Every time he revisits her through prose, he is able to maintain that nymphet state his memory. Humbert writes Lolita in a prison cell as evidence in his defense; on trial for the murder of Clare Quilty, a famous dramatist. Humbert occasionally addresses the reader as "ladies and gentlemen of the jury" or some sarcastic equivalent, and this reminds us of the basic situation. His confession quickly reveals a different crime: that for many years he had manipulated and sexually abused a young girl, Dolores Haze, "Lolita”. Claiming he murdered Clare Quilty in revenge for seducing his child lover away from him. As he finishes the manuscript, he decides to withhold it until both he and Lolita are dead, claiming to know that he may be imprisoned by this lack of evidence. However, he dies of heart failure before the trial begins. Humbert refers to himself as a beast, he expresses sadness or humiliation at his own acts, scorns his own stupidity, and he seems bluntly honest as he confesses his seductions, lies, schemes, and act of murder. But he doesn't much talk about the murder. He is consumed by his sexual attraction Lolit...
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...s the jurors can convict him, why shouldn't he play on their pity? He brags about his ability to influence the feelings of his former physicians, psychiatrists, and wives. Humbert's seduction increases.; not only does he seduce various women and young girls, he is perhaps trying to seduce the readers as well. He uses his words against the reader's integrity; what marvelous, influential, and mesmerizing words they are. The accuracy of his imageries challenge our cynicism through the intense reality they invoke. The humor and irony and horror and misery of the novel wears away our objectivity until we feel an sympathy for Humbert's suffering. He wants to turn the sympathy in this single direction: that we let him have his longing, his love. And in a sense, this means letting him have Lolita in a sexual and textual way.
Works Cited
Lolita by Valdimir Nabokov
The idea of enlightenment and the feeling of liberation seem unattainable most of the time. However, once you discover a gateway, such as literature or meditation, it becomes easier to reach your goals of becoming open-minded. Azar Nafisi’s “Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran” describes the struggles she and her students face and how they use literature to escape from their atrocious life. Similarly, “Wisdom” by Robert Thurman explores the idea of reaching a nirvana-like state where people become aware of their surroundings and the nature of themselves. Nafisi and Thurman state that once people have attained the knowledge to reach an utopian, nirvana like state and have unmasked themselves from a pseudo-self mask put on for society, they must share their knowledge with others. Both Nafisi and Thurman propose that in order to act out selflessly and become an honest, true self, an individual needs bravery and courage to escape from their comfort zone and reach a state of compassion.
Hester is a youthful, beautiful, proud woman who has committed an awful sin and a scandal that changes her life in a major way. She commits adultery with a man known as Arthur Dimmesdale, leader of the local Puritan church and Hester’s minister. The adultery committed results in a baby girl named Pearl. This child she clutches to her chest is the proof of her sin. This behavior is unacceptable. Hester is sent to prison and then punished. Hester is the only one who gets punished for this horrendous act, because no one knows who the man is that Hester has this scandalous affair with. Hester’s sin is confessed, and she lives with two constant reminders of that sin: the scarlet letter itself, and Pearl, the child conceived with Dimmesdale. Her punishment is that she must stand upon a scaffold receiving public humiliation for several hours each day, wearing the scarlet letter “A” on her chest, represe...
Justine, too, is an ‘idealised figure’, described during the trial as having a countenance which, ‘always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful.’ She is the archetypal innocent, being beautiful, weak and entirely accepting of her fate to the point of martyrdom.
“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.” –The Grand Inquisitor” “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” - Father Zosima. These two quotes voice the polarized philosophies that impregnate the book, The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan, the second of the three sons, and Zosima, the old monk, are huge commentators on the question, “Is the burden of free will to much for a human to bear?”
As Frankenstein returns to the court, the guilt burdens him because the court condemns Justine for a crime she does not commit. The tragedy of William’s death brings the burden of constant
In Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano De Bergerac, originally written in the early 1600’s is still able to resonate today with younger and older audiences. The play on a surface level will get the audience to believe that inner beauty is far more important than outer beauty. Although this is the focal point, Rostland pushes the audience to analyze a character’s nobleness. A theme found deep within the play pushes the idea that lying is erroneous in any situation and goes against the moral code of honor.
As if to mock the crumbling principles of a fallen era, “The Just Judges” preside over a solemn dumping ground of earthly hell. This flimsy legion of justice, like the omnipresent eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, casts a shadow of pseudo-morality over a land spiraling towards pathos. But Albert Camus’s The Fall unfolds amidst the seedy Amsterdam underground--a larger, more sinister prison than the Valley of Ashes, whose center is Mexico City, a neighborhood bar and Mecca for the world’s refuse. The narrator and self-proclaimed judge-penitent, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, presides over his subjects every night to “offer his services,” although partially dissembled and highly suspect, to any who will listen. More artfully than a black widow preying on her unsuspecting mate, he traps us in his confessional monologue, weaving a web so intricate and complete that no one can escape its clutches.
Cultures throughout the world encompass a diverse array of lifestyles by which societies are led by. These cultures, in a typical sense, are created by the subset of a population that follows a particular set of morals and ideals. An individual’s own identity, as a result, is dependent on many varying factors of their lifestyle in these culturally regulated regions. In the stories, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” by Azar Nafisi, and “The Naked Citadel,” by Susan Faludi, the authors depict the impact made on an individual’s identity by male-dominated communities prejudiced against women. The discriminations described in these stories contribute to the creation of cultures that oppose the idea of seeing women as equals to men. Hence,
...s of Lolita and Humbert to show the isolation and loneliness they feel, and to show just how different and immoral the situation is. By stressing the dissonance between one persona to the next, he portrays a view of his characters that is sad and shocking, for the public seen is also the reader; the unaware, innocent, “moral” group. By letting us into the different faces of Lolita and Humbert, Nabokov reveals the tragedy in the novel, and allows the reader to vividly feel what is morally right and wrong with Humbert, Lolita, and ourselves.
Natasha, Wolfe, and Khrenov have colorful dreams of distant lands. Nabokov wrote Natasha in 1924, a few years after the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks took control over Russia after the revolution and many of the rich were exiled or faced death. Natasha and her father could have been past nobility that was exiled to live in another country. The forced exile of the Khrenov family gives a purpose to the dreams they have. Khrenov remembers the village they lived in and the sawdust that covered the bridge. Khrenov also has nightmarish dreams where he sees a barrel of a gun pointed at him in his sleep. The dream with the gun could be a memory from his past when the police may have forced him and Natasha out of their old home. Wolfe’s dreams
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mr. Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is that the townspeople will find out about his sin of adultery with Hester Prynne. Mr. Dimmesdale fears that his soul could not take the shame of such a disclosure, as he is an important moral figure in society. However, in not confessing his sin to the public, he suffers through the guilt of his sin, a pain which is exacerbated by the tortures of Roger Chillingworth. Though he consistently chooses guilt over shame, Mr. Dimmesdale goes through a much more painful experience than Hester, who endured the public shame of the scarlet letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s guilt is much more damaging to his soul than any shame that he might have endured.
According to literary theories and the theories of Fredrich Nietzsche, human beings have an unquenchable urge for power and will use "ethics," and everything else, in order to increase their authority. In Nabokov's Lolita, we see how Humbert controls Lolita in the beginning stages of their relationship but eventually finds himself going mad because of her deceitful ways and the control she has over his sexual desires.
According to professor Vladimir Nabokov, one of the most important qualities of a good reader is having an imagination (Nabokov 3). This is a quality is not only useful for readers, but also for those who are involved with publications, such as my involvement with yearbook. The yearbook programs is such that you are assigned a specific topic, whether it be sports or activities, and based off the research and information gathered, the writer compiles three different components to tell the story of that specific assignment. Through this structure the writer has to be creative and imagine what their topic should be, and how to structure the story based on this. Although this was my role of the staff last year, this year I am a design editor, a
In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the overruling drive of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is his want to attest himself master of all, whether man or woman, his prime cravings, all-powerful destiny, or even something as broad as language. Through the novel the reader begins to see Humbert’s most extreme engagements and feelings, from his marriage to his imprisonment, not as a consequence of his sensual, raw desires but rather his mental want to triumph, to own, and to control. To Humbert, human interaction becomes, or is, very unassuming for him: his reality is that females are to be possessed, and men ought to contest for the ownership of them. They, the women, become the very definition of superiority and dominance. But it isn’t so barbaric of Humbert, for he designates his sexuality as of exceptionally polished taste, a penchant loftier than the typical man’s. His relationship with Valerie and Charlotte; his infatuation with Lolita; and his murdering of Quilty are all definite examples of his yearning for power. It is so that throughout the novel, and especially by its conclusion, the reader sees that Humbert’s desire for superiority subjugates the odd particularities of his wants and is the actual reason of his anguish.
In his "On a Book Entitled Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov recalls that he felt the "first little throb of Lolita" run through him as he read a newspaper article about an ape who, "after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage." The image of a confinement so complete that it dominates and shapes artistic expression (however limited that expression may be) is a moving and powerful one, and it does, indeed, reflect in the text of Lolita. Humbert Humbert, the novel's eloquent poet-narrator, observes the world through the bars of his obsession, his "nympholepsy", and this confinement deeply affects the quality of his narration. In particular, his powerful sexual desires prevent him from understanding Lolita in any significant way, so that throughout the text what he describes is not the real Lolita, but an abstract creature, without depth or substance beyond the complex set of symbols and allusions that he associates with her. When in his rare moments of exhaustion Humbert seems to lift this literary veil, he reveals for a moment the violent contrast between his intricately manipulated narration and the stark ugliness of a very different truth.