'The Loss Of Innocence In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita'

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.

    In Chapter 31 of Part 1 of Lolita, Humbert and Lolita are in the lobby of the Enchanted Hunters only hours after consummating their sexual relationship. As Humbert arrives in the lobby to check out of the hotel, he observes Lolita as she sits reading a movie magazine in a large armchair, and his description of her progresses from a focus on her loss of innocence to a focus on her inner, demonic nature. As elsewhere in the novel, the reader here sees Humbert attempting to mitigate his own sense of guilt and self-loathing.

The miraculous metamorphosis of a child into a woman is of the utmost significance in Lolita. As this metamorphosis occurs, other changes take place. Humbert's sexual preoccupation evolves into love, and the protective and solipsistic world in which he had once place Lolita dissolves, leaving him aware that Lolita has been his "own creation" and that he was in control of her life. Finally, he realizes that his sexual intimacy with Lolita has served only to separate them.

“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;

Lolita is always an interest towards hitchhikers. Humbert realizes that their continual relationship activity has given Lolita an air that attracts other men and boys. He tries to prevent her to seeing other boys. Lolita wants to flirt. Humbert watches female children, when they were play in the ground. But Lolita has an interest towards ride on horseback or play tennis. Humbert watches a man speaking with Lolita. But, he tried everything show to Lolita. He is mainly concerned with affair should maintain secretly before the other people.

It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.

Lolita challenges Humbert’s authority causing him to exercise even more dominance in order to have complete control over her. “This was one of the reason why I tried to keep as far away from people as possible, while Lo, on the other hand, would do her utmost to draw as many potential witnesses into her orbit as she could.” (Nabokov

He loves her, lolita. But reality is his wrinkles, his loose skin, makes his love ugly. It is against our social norms. After lolita’s mother died, they travel around America.

The use of language in literature can affect the way in which the reader interprets something. Language allows authors to manipulate the specific meaning he or she chooses to create. In the novel Lolita, written by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator, Humbert Humbert, employs language in a specific manner meant to stimulate emotion in the reader. Rather than exposing him as a pedophile, the narrator’s altering speech is intended to accentuate the artistic nature for his inappropriate relationship with a young nymphette. This suggests that even the most alarming obsessions can be temporarily disguised by the splendor of his skills.

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert has control over Lolita at first because he was the authoritative figure but as the book goes on and the more Lolita became deceitful, he became crazier because of the power she has over his sexual desires. Nabokov uses a strategy to let Humbert tell his own story to sympathize with him in order not to seem like he has pedophilic endeavors, but then Nabokov twists the plot around and shows the monster he really is. Nabokov didn’t realize the impact this book would have in the world today; it may have been labeled “pornography” by many, but the idea of Lolita emerges in advertising now to spread the word about pedophilia. In the beginning of the book, Nabokov writes: “So let us get started.

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

In comparison Lolita, the subject of obsession is the victim. Lolita exists only as the object of his obsession, never as an individual. The language used

Through his language, he creates a distance between Dolores and Lolita, between the child and the "solipsized" creature upon whom he can "safely" impose his sexual desire. Humbert's version is a blend of several tightly connected, often conflicting personal images. Some are the products of his own imagination, while others stem from classic works of literature or popular songs. He makes no effort to separate these images, but shifts rapidly from one to another as the narrative demands. They come together to form a new Lolita, one who is only Humbert's projection of the original, one who possesses only those qualities that he imposes upon her, and who shows no evolution beyond that which he allows her.

Do you ever have a first impression of someone that is completely different from who they truly are? In Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, the readers are able to delve into the mind of Humbert Humbert, a European man with pedophilic tendencies and a history of mental illnesses. When he travels to America, he meets his “true love”, a twelve year old girl, and there the readers are able to see the true nature of Humbert.The author uses the point of view of his novel and characterization to walk the readers through the mind of the main protagonist Humbert Humbert and show that not all people are truly what they seem to be.

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