Humbert's Use Of Characters In Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita and Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho both show the stories of seemingly regular men based off of how they interact with people in their lives while in public view. The main characters from each novel are not normal functioning men of society. Humbert Humbert from Nabokov’s Lolita is a middle aged man who has an obsession with young girls around the age of twelve. Patrick Bateman from Ellis’s American Psycho is an incredibly narcissistic, egotistic, man who is an investment banker by day and serial killer by night. Both men have had a privileged upbringing.

Through searching inside the haze one will find their true self. In the book “The Ravishing of Lol Stein” by Marguerite Duras, the main character, Lol Stein, goes through a journey to express her true personality. In the passage, Lol has an affair with the narrator, Jack Hold, which shows her transition as a person the most. Her internal transition into becoming an entirely different person is highlighted by the author’s use of repetition, diction, symbolism, and dialogue.

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

On one side, the Lisbon sisters lose their grip on what innocence truly means, allowing themselves to get caught in the fast moving pace of their youth. Without any outlet for their self-expression, they take their own lives out of pain and grief. The religious references and lively imagery paradoxically describe the lack of morality and the ultimate loss of life. Lo is no longer “Dolores on the dotted line,” but Lolita through and through (11). Humbert ripped her childlike innocence from her delicate fingertips, creating a wandering soul without roots.

This results in the narrative perspective of the novel demonstrating how Humbert attempts to conceal his true nature through, in his own mind, clever ‘adjustments’ to how the story is presented and references to historical figures who shared the same desires as him- ‘Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe’s and Bea Dante’s’ (Nabokov 1955), yet often reverts to a disposition in which he laments about his monstrous desires. Not only this, but the comparison to famous literary greats suggests that Humbert considers himself to be of their status and thus possesses an idolized version of himself, a self which can easily transform language into ploys to conceal his true nature.

The men who show their obsessions in Fear and Lolita do so in a more aggressive manner. Humbert, who has always had in interest in young girls, is instantly taken with Dolores, the 12 year old daughter of his landlady - “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.” She is the whole reason for his decision to stay at the house, as he is initially put off by her mother, the domineering Charlotte. Humbert takes extreme measures by marrying Charlotte for the sole purpose of staying close to Dolores. After Charlotte’s death, Humbert takes Dolores on the road for an indefinite road trip. He is so attached to her that he becomes easily panicked when he is faced with the possibility of her leaving him. This causes him to be incredibly possessive over her, limiting her interaction with friends her own age to prevent

So far, so good. Having had intercourse with Lolita earlier that morning Humbert, not surprisingly, sees her as his victim, sees both her childlike innocence and the signs of his own brutal assault on that innocence. But at the end of the passage, Humbert's understanding of Lolita and her "lost innocence" changes radically as he proclaims her to

The relationship between Annabel and Humbert is one marked with sexual restraint. Humbert describes an important sexual encounter, when they escaped to a mimosa grove while their chaperones play bridge, in great depth and it is this encounter that haunts Humbert for the rest of his life. Shortly after this moment, Annabel is called away by her mother and Humbert never gets to reach his sexual climax. He also never sees Annabel again because she dies of typhus four months later. Because of her death, Annabel is kept sacred and perfect in Humbert’s memory. The unsuccessful first tryst plagues the rest of Humbert’s relationships with women. Ellen Pifer reiterates this in her book, Demon and Doll, saying that “It is Humbert’s longing for the unattainable, for ideal perfection – what he calls the ‘rosegray never-to-be-had’ – that fires his imagination and fuels his desire for nymphet beauty” (68). This unattainable perfection which Pifer speaks of appears to be the ever-young Annabel.

Furthermore, as Lolita can be considered an open text and this paper is concerned with bringing female perspectives to the forefront of the novel, it is reasonable to apply traditional feminist theory to the text to examine Humbert’s marginalisation of women. In particular, this reading will be formulated through applying the work of second-wave feminist Kate Millett, which focuses on exposing the reprehensibility of patriarchal oppression. To begin, Nabokov consistently constructs Humbert to display misogynistic views. To illustrate this, in the scene where Humbert recalls his sexual excitement when Dolores laid across his lap, he fantasizes about being ‘a radiant and robust Turk…enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves.’ Due to the reader’s knowledge of Humbert’s affinity for ‘nymphets,’ whom he defines as girls between the age of nine and fourteen, it can be deduced that these ‘slaves’ are female. The word ‘frail’ holds connotations of debility, fragility and vulnerability. Through these negative associations, Nabokov has positioned readers to understand that Humbert views women as inferior to men. This holds relevance to Millett’s theory of female inferiority, through which she explains that ‘the female’s inferior status’ is ‘ascribed to her physical weakness or intellectual inferiority.’ Millett published her work in 1969 during the second wave feminist movement, whereby women demanded equality and challenged patriarchal ideologies regarding sexuality,

The two passages, written by Humbert Humbert, describes two of his ‘nymphet’ loves. In the passage, both Annabelle and Lolita gets introduced. Read the passages carefully. Then, write an essay that compares H.H.’s perspective of the two characters to show his feelings on both of them.

The critical nature of modern society causes people being judged to feel isolated, ashamed, and worthless. Due to this, contemporary individuals believe that they have to be perfect, in appearance and character traits, in order to conform with others. As a result, people spend tremendous amounts of time developing certain traits to make themselves more likeable. Unfortunately, they are missing vital information regarding the danger of positive personality traits. Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, authors of The Boy in the Suitcase, and Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies, investigate the transformation of positive character traits into tragic flaws through their main characters. In their novels, the authors

In “On the Subway,” Sharon Olds illustrates the differences of two individuals which contrast in a single characteristic. The narrator’s thoughts give more in depth understanding to how he feels about the boy on the other side of the subway car.

Love and obsession are often misinterpreted to be the same thing, yet one can cause people to flourish, while another destroys the people involved. Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed with the childlike innocence in young girls and pursues a 12 year old girl, Lolita. Humbert and Lolita develop a sexual relationship that inevitably takes away her innocence more each time that they are together. Vladimir Nabokov uses irony and diction in Lolita to show how Humbert is obsessed with Lolita’s childlike innocence, and how his obsession leads to the destruction of the childhood that he is so desperately trying to obtain.

(285) In an effort to provide himself with a justification for his fixation with Lolita, Humbert details his relationship with Annabel, Lolita's "predecessor" at the beginning of the novel. Of his teenager relationship with Annabel, he writes "the spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today." (14) It is suggested that the reader will thus understand the beauty of that relationship, as well as his relationship with Lolita. In the end, though, catastrophic realism emerges within his

Vladimir Nabokov, one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, is a highly aesthetic writer. Most of his work shows an amazing interest in and talent for language. He deceptively uses language in Lolita to mask and make the forbidden divine. Contextually, Lolita may be viewed as a novel about explicit sexual desire. However, it is the illicit desire of a stepfather for his 12-year old stepdaughter. The novel’s subject inevitably conjures up expectations of pornography, but there in not a single obscene term in Lolita. Nabokov portrays erotic scenes and sensual images with a poetic sensibility that belies the underlying meaning of the words. The beautiful manipulation of language coerces one to understand Humbert’s interdict act of