Lolita Hummbert Corrupt Pedophile

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.

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.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul” (Nabokov 9). Quoted from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, Humbert Humbert briefly describes his sensibilities towards his love Lolita. I’ve italicized love for the reason that this book is perceived often as not a true American love story but as a pedophile’s lust. The reasoning for the italicization is because I wanted to emphasis on the point that this book offers more than that of a pedophile’s love. Nabokov’s novel does a very good job of creating an interesting yet unorthodoxed plot. What Nabokov might find acceptable in today’s society, some people might find very offensive and disrupting. He does this to grab the reader’s attention;

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,

Humbert enacts Quilty as his double gradually as time goes on. First Humbert mentions that he is “said to resemble some crooner or actor chap on whom Lo has a crush” (43) as he described the ad on the wall above Lolita’s bed followed by a “Quine the Swine. Guilty of killing Quilty. Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!,” Humbert said that “the resemblance was slight” (69). Soon enough, as he becomes Lolita’s abductor, Humbert notices so much as time went on such that the fact that the entries in the hotel registries showed “his type of humor... had affinities with my own” (249). Humbert’s “story” transitions from him denying his relation to Quilty to recognizing it and combining it with him. The double represents the essence of what one character wants to restrain, or make up for and what the other character has. Quilty has the courage to do and say things that Humbert can never. Humbert also states, “he swept by me in a purple bathrobe, very like the one I had” (294), and their two characters become one as he says “he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us” (299). Quilty also had the courage to admit that he was penetrating Dolores rather than just saving her, “I had stolen the honey of a spasm without impairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done.” The plot does not only have a final confrontation of both Humbert and Quilty, but includes a scene where one finishes the existence of the double

Throughout Lolita, Humbert is always trying to gain reader sympathy. His motivation being a slight sense of guilt for using Lolita that escalates during the course of the novel. Humbert wants to avoid taking responsibility for his action in its entirety. More precisely Humbert’s eventual murder of Clair Quilty and robbing Lolita of her childhood. As an unreliable narrator Humbert employs several different methods in attempting to affect the reader.

As the jury for Humbert’s case in Lolita, it is the reader’s job to utilize the evidence given in Humbert’s testimony of his wonderland of a life. For readers that have read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I argue that these readers already understand how to analyze the case at hand because of the events of the trial at the end of the story. Reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland enables readers to recognize that Humbert’s presentation of his defense is a work of nonsense rendering his final judgment impossible. At the climax of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice finds herself in watching a trial after her interaction with the Gryphon.

This has occurred in society before where criminals convicted of murder simply blame it on their Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder. Barbara Straumann, when analyzing the relationship between young Humbert and his lover Annabel, states, “Yet, if the Annabel story is one of his fakes, it is fabricated to deceive himself...thinking about the cause of ‘the rift in my life’ giving rise, or rather arousing, his ‘excessive desire’ for underage girls” (94). Here, Straumann explores the unreliability of Humbert’s narration by claiming his story of Annabel as simply an excuse for his actions. Child molesters blaming their actions on traumas in the past was exactly the event critics fear if the ideas in Lolita become widespread. Proceeding from mental disorders, Humbert brings up his other “side” who mistreated Lolita. This ushers in dissociative identity disorder to the novel, another illegitimate excuse critics believe can be used as a justification for child molestation. Mark Nicholls also finds Humbert’s admission of another personality. He states, “For in Humbert, from the beginning, there is that other side of his personality, the side in which sexuality...bound up with the pursuit of perversion” (162). Additionally, critics claim Nabokov characterizes Humbert so he is able to mask his evil nature behind his eloquence and charm. Humbert recounts

In Lolita, written by Vladimir Nabokov, Humbert uses sexuality to his advantage to satisfy his corrupt need to have an intimate relationship with a so called nymphet. Humbert’s incapacity to understand a growing

A central element of Lolita is the unreliable nature of Humbert Humbert’s narration. Every event of the novel is manipulated by Humbert in order to serve his ultimate goal of eliciting sympathy from his audience. This is especially apparent in the way Humbert characterizes Lolita. He sexualizes her and makes her culpable in her own rape and abuse in order to shift the blame from the perpetrator of the crime, him. So that leaves readers with the question, who is the real Lolita?

Throughout the course of the novel, Nabokov mentions and references the theme of love, specifically when he recalls on Humbert’s feelings toward Lolita. As the narrator of the story, Humbert uses love as a willful and tenacious justification for his pedophilic tendencies toward nymphets like Lolita. As Lolita is only a young, undeveloped, and immature child, Humbert’s desire for Lolita is not only unreasonable and awkward, but also psychologically and physically obsessive; he is unlike any other pedophile out here, as he experiences very little satisfaction after “fondling”, “kissing”, and “groping” Lolita. In every description and detail of Lolita throughout the novel, Humbert reminds the readers of his obsessive affinities which he has absolutely no control over and the ones that constantly keep him wanting to come back for more. As a large portion of the audience of this novel find the book to have the basis of “lust”, and a fair amount of other readers believes it has the basis of “love”, the question of whether or not Humbert truly loves Lolita comes into

and I may share, my Lolita" [p. 309], readers can assume he is using artistic forms to explain his undying love for Lolita, but, in a way, he suggests that art gives him something that Lolita doesn’t. In relation to the fact that art gives him the freedom to imagine his desires, it is the immortality of that freedom that truly fulfils him. While it is obvious that Lolita satisfies him sexually, Lolita does not satisfy everything he wants whenever and forever. Humbert’s obsession for Lolita comes from his childhood relationship with Annabel Leigh which did not last after her death.

Lolita becomes ill, and is forced to go to the hospital. Humbert comes into the hospital one morning only to find that she has been checked out of by another man.

From the first, he juxtaposes the ordinary with the sexual in his descriptive odes to love as well as simple statement reflecting her youth. The juxtaposition of youth and sexual desire is the driving force behind the novel and the controversy. The wording, however, is a mixture of romantic lyricism and obscene allusion. The tension is derived through the sensuous beauty of the words rather than the image of the young girl, just “four feet ten”. “The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps” refers to Humbert’s tongue and the palate he wishes to “tap at three on the teeth” is Lolita’s. Evidently, Humbert’s clever choice of words masks the interdict aspect of his sexual desires for Lolita. Poetic lines such as “light of my life, fire of my loins” become fundamental in understanding the contextual allusion from immorality in Humbert’s deviant sexual desires and behavior.