Lolita

The novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is the ripping story of Humbert Humbert, a man completely asphyxiated by the beauty and charms of prepubescent girls, especially those of his new daughter, Lolita. Humbert narrates his own story, going into great detail about these girls that he has become smitten with and the lengths he went to stay with Lolita. Humbert, as a narrator, is quite captivating; He makes short work of drawing the reader in with beautiful descriptions of his young love interests and long, enchanting rants about the nature of his love for Lolita. Such beautiful language and imagery almost makes one forget that what he speaks of is pedophilia and rape. One almost feels sorry for this old man and wants to see him find happiness with this little girl. If one ever finds themselves identifying with the struggle of this man, feel that he is truly in love with these girls, or hope that he can get away with the terrible things he is doing for the sake of the story, you have probably been taken advantage of by an unreliable narrator.

Humbert reassures the reader that “under no circumstance would he have interfered with the innocence if there was the least risk of a row,” (19); He avoids any kind of physical contact in order to preserve their innocence and going to extreme lengths to avoid any kind of trouble with the law, exaggerating that he could face “ten years in jail if you only show her you are looking at her.” (20). He insists upon all of these things, all the while attempting to work his daughter into a sense of comfort so that he may indeed get his sexual kicks with the nymphets of his dreams. We realize now that his content in just observing these girls has been a straight uo lie. Only when he is sure that there are no consequences for having intercourse with his daughter, that no one will find out and that her innocence has long since been taken from her, Humbert goes in for the kill, so to speak, and forces sex with this girl using narcotics. Even as their affair continues across the country, he still insists that he loves Lolita and would never do anything to hurt her, and yet he plays to her good side, buying her gifts and taking her places, in order to win a little caress or some kissing. In that right, this man has turned his daughter into his own private prostitute, shattering all illusions we may have had of his pure hearted love in the beginning of the story. His unreliable narration gets taken a step further when he realizes that his daughter once cried while observing her friends interacting with their parents. He finally sees that he truly had ruined her life and robbed her of her childhood, the very thing he insisted he would never do to any young girl. In the end, he manages to regain the reader’s respect by having himself arrested for rape. Nabokov truly tests his readers with Humbert’s seesaw of morality, a truly gripping and thought provoking strategy.