"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight"
It seemed appropriate to honor banned books week with one of
my favorite books that has been questioned/challenged and banned since it was
published.
Disgusted, creeped
out, uncomfortable, and empathetic are just a few of the emotions I felt while
reading Nabokov’s Lolita. This is a sordid tale of Humbert Humbert, a middle
aged man who really never let go of his first love from his childhood, and his
obsession with nymphets, young prepubescent girls who he claims seduce him not
just by their looks but what is deep within them.
Let me clarify this a bit more. Humbert has some disgusting
issues. As he begins the story he attempts to justify his future actions by
blaming it on the loss of his first love from childhood. But even as the reader
you couldn’t possibly imagine how far he will go to fulfill his twisted
desires.
Though he tries to live life according to societies morals
(has a job and a wife) he ultimately fails which leads him to renting a house
in the home of a widow, Charlotte Haze. Though he can’t stand her, he remains
and it isn’t difficult to see why. She has a daughter, the 12-year-old Dolores
Haze, who becomes the subject of Humbert’s sexual being.
But who is Lolita? This is the special name Humbert has
designated for his nymphet but it seems like more than that. She is his ideal.
It is not just her physical attractiveness (reading about how attractive a
12-year-old is has to be one of the most disturbing thoughts ever) but a
quality of her personality that has Humbert so fascinated and fixated. He
admits to her similarity to his first love. It seems as though Lolita is not
really Dolores, but this ideal that he is stuck on though he continues to age.
As I read further into the story I was only more confused
about how I felt about the protagonist. Nabokov’s poetic writing actually makes
you start to feel bad for him, as though he is so tortured by his psychological
issues that he can’t possibly escape from his desires. It even implies that it
is Lolita who seduces him, unrelenting, blaming her for future events.
"Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.” ~ Humbert
Lolita becomes the seductress. This young girl who was born
to manipulate men, especially the weak willed. She uses it to get what she
wants. At least, that’s what the narrator wants you to believe. But Lolita, or
Dolores, was a kid. She only used what she was taught which was that by using
her body she gets what she wants. Humbert made it clear that he wanted her, and
even went as far as to isolate her so that she would be entirely dependent on
him. And the only way she learned to get what she wanted or needed was to give
up her body to this perve.
"He broke my heart. You merely broke my life"~ Lolita
The story is extremely biased. It is from the opinion of
Humbert, who in the beginning we are told has died in jail. This doesn’t paint
a picture of a honest, good natured person. Yet he attempts to justify the
actions he took, even putting blame on the child. Even towards the end when she
has established her own life away from him, he has continued to obsess over
her, this ideal of her during the year he kept her isolated by driving across
the US with her. The truth of it all is that he was a pedophile and he preyed
upon a young girl who had no one to turn to. Her father is dead, her mother
expressed her disdain and jealousy of her daughter, and is also eventually
killed in an accident. She has no one except Humbert and therefore is forced to
use her body to ensure her safety and security.
I know the topic of pedophilia is what makes this book so
questionable. It is an uncomfortable subject for most. But the way in which the
novel is written is so poetic it almost makes you believe the protagonist. It
makes you feel empathy as though he did nothing wrong when in reality he was a
monster. That is really what captivated me so much about this novel.
"Because you took advantage of my disadvantage"~ Humbert
In the end though, Humbert is judged and dies still unable
to get what he has desired most, to be reunited with his love. The truth of
this is not that he can’t contact her but that his love wasn’t real. Lolita was
merely an ideal created from his twisted and demented mind.
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."
Good post. Like the blog so far.
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