Lolita…this book was a conundrum for me. The way it was written was somewhat over my head and dense and yet, it was a hard one for me to stop reading. As nauseating as the main themes were, the author did a phenomenal job of keeping the reader’s attention. The novel is all about pedophilia and molestation as well as murder and other violent acts. It’s enough to put even the most unfeeling person on edge and yet I find the attraction to the novel hard to put into words. By using an unreliable narrator, Nabokov manages to place somewhat of a veil over the reader’s eyes. The narrator’s view is slanted and he serves to slant the readers’ as well, in order to justify what he did as ok. Throughout the novel, he has somewhat of an inner conflict. He knows that his lust and actions were wrong and yet he often uses the loss of his first love as a scapegoat as well as Lolita herself. His warped sense of reality doesn’t help matters at all, which leaves the reader in a rather uncomfortable state as the book continues to progress.
“Good will! She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outbursts of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible, oh my poor, bruised child.
I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais! And there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. Lolita girl, brave Dolly Schiller,”
This passage alone shows the narrators conflicted nature as well as his excuses. He hides behind being a romantic, saying he actually loved her for more than just her body and childlike whimsy. He admits he was cruel and monstrous but excuses it because he knows his ‘love’ was sincere. In one portion of the novel he even claims that Lolita seduced him with her games and teasing, though in this passage he begins to realize that she was more likely covering up her vulnerability with her ‘brashness’ and ‘boredom’. This often caused him to lash out at her, to try to provoke her into feeling something more for him. To feel his passion and lust, though neither were ever truly returned.
“I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
“You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and half-throttled, I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another's child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine;”
As mentioned before, the author does a great job of skewing the novel and works the unreliable narrator well. Even though child molesters/pedophiles are the lowest of the low, Nabokov makes the reader want to feel some sort of sympathy toward the narrator. Humbert wants us to believe he’s the victim and some moments in the story he actually achieved it. Overall Lolita is one of those extremely controversial books that make you really question morality. If Lolita had been just a few years older, the book would be something completely different, like wise, if it Hubert were younger or if it were simply in a different era. It wouldn’t have made such an impact on the masses.
