Humbert's Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

2005-02-23T06:44:00.000-08:00

Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1899. He studied literature in England during his college years. His life was drastically altered when, as a young man staying in Berlin, he learned that his father, an outspoken political activist, had been assassinated a short time before the Russian Revolution began; this may in part explain his fascination with the sudden, unexpected deaths that occur so frequently in Lolita. Nabokov lived his life on the move, escaping his native Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution and then moving to Germany. He escaped Germany and moved to France after the Nazis assumed power in the 1930s. He then escaped France and came to America in 1940 just before the Germans captured Paris. In 1961, he left the United States and moved to Switzerland, where he remained until his death in 1977.

In America, Nabokov taught at a series of colleges, including Harvard, Wellesley, Stanford, and Cornell. With the release of Lolita, which he began writing during World War II and published in 1955, he achieved national fame, allowing him to write full time. He produced a number of highly successful works in English and Russian, including Pale Fire,Mary,Pnin, and the non-fiction Speak, Memory. A highly aesthetic writer, most of his work shows an amazing interest in and talent for language.

Contextually, Lolita may be viewed as a novel about explicit sexual desire. The book was one of a series of novels in the 20th century that was deemed obscene by many readers, although in general the 20th century saw a great liberalization of sexual taboos in literature. Beginning with the writings of Freud, writers pursued more frequently the topic of sexual desire and activity, seen most notably in the work of D.H. Lawrence, whose Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in many areas for its sexually explicit content. In 1922, James Joyce published the monumental Ulysses, another sexually explicit book that contains a scene depicting masturbation. As a result, it was banned in America by the customs authorities until a court decision in 1933 (referred to in the Foreword). Lolita continues the literary exploration of sex, turning to the unnatural and deeply disturbing realm of pedophilia and sexual slavery.

No definitive explanation can be given for what exactly Nabokov is trying to tell us with this book. We do best, however, to view it as a work of literary art combined with a psychological exploration of a man with a serious mental problem. Lolita, like most of Nabokov's novels, forces the reader to empathize with marginal characters. Undoubtedly, Humbert is a bad human being, but one of the great tactics of the novel is its method of forcing the reader to understand Humbert through a beautiful manipulation of language. This is a novel of literary and sexual jokes ranging from the most high-brow and obscure to the most vulgar. The book has something for everyone, and it is safe to say that it is fully understood by no one. It remains, however, Nabokov's crowning achievement, and will likely be the work for which he is best remembered. Not only is it Nabokov's best book, but it is easily one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Connecting Lolita to Other Works of Literature

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Foreshadow, Aftermath, Discussion, and Repercussion Application

Certain events must take place to move the novel forward, and often the author must use skillful storytelling technique to produce verisimilitude, i.e., to make the occurrence of the event seem natural rather than too convenient or contrived. "Masking" refers to the sum of this technique, the cumulative effect rendering a necessary yet potentially awkward event believable. Proper utilization of this indispensable technique allows the author more freedom to explore the introduction of unusual and/or surprising events and/or endings. Examples as follows:

In Nabokov's "Lolita," the wife of Humbert conveniently dies so that Humbert can procede with his plans to seclude himself with Lolita:

First, the event is foreshadowed - Humbert receives a phone call from a neighbor stating that something has happened to his wife. Next, (beginning a new chapter) Humbert goes outside and witnesses the aftermath carnage of the accident - the scene is complex with objects and nearly surreal in portrayal. The police show him the body, he observes the details of it, etc. All of this lends credibility to the event. A few pages later, as a repercussion of the event occurs: a discussion ensues with a man who arrives to hash over accident details with Humbert—the question of the event's verisimilitude is settled.

In "The Great Gatsby," Myrtle Wilson, the mistress of Tom Buchanan (Daisy's husband and Gatsby's enemy), is struck dead very coincidentally out of nowhere by Gatsby's own car, thus setting in motion the events which would later culminate in Gatsby's death.

First, the event is foreshadowed - Tom Buchannan (who had been following Gatsby's car) sees the crowd and confusion gathering in the distance before he arrives at the scene. Next, the aftermath of the scene is viewed, i.e., Myrtle's dead body, the crowd, the despairing husband. It is learned that she was drunk and fighting with her husband before it happened (the foreshadowing of this accomplished earlier). Someone in the crowd mentions the color and style of the car that performed the deed - this hints it was Gatsby's car. Later, Nick accidentally discovers Gatsby watching Daisy's house and, Surprise!, in the ensuing discussion, Daisy is revealed as having driven the death car. Repercussions of the event include the mad husband's killing of Gatsby. Thus, verisimilitude is achieved.

In "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles, the author decides the fate of a major character, Phineas, by means of a bizarre mock court trial held in secret somewhere in a secluded spot of the school, and the unfolding of the event seems perfectly reasonable.

Several separate and distinct instances of foreshadowing proceed the event: First, an event of this type was spoken of by one of the characters; second, talk of a secret society within the school (the org. that would conduct the event); and the remainder involved inward glimpses of the peculiar character who would conduct the trial and engineer it to such a climax. In the case of the latter, it was therefore not unbelievable that this person would conduct such an event.

Short Lolita Quiz

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1. The name of Humbert's first love is:
(A) Lolita
(B) Dolores
(C) Annabel
(D) Charlotte

2. Charlotte dies when she:
(A) Overdoses on sleeping medicine
(B) Drives her car off a bridge
(C) Gets run over
(D) Is strangled by Humbert

3. Humbert's first wife is:
(A) Annabel
(B) Valeria
(C) Delores
(D) Charlotte

4. Humbert is writing Lolita from:
(A) A sanitarium
(B) His home in Mexico
(C) His jail cell
(D) His hotel in France

5. Humbert is put on trial for:
(A) Murdering Clare Quilty
(B) Raping Lolita
(C) Murdering his wife
(D) Tax evasion

6. How are Clare Quilty and the Ramsdale dentist Dr. Quilty related?
(A) They are not
(B) They are twin brothers
(C) They are the same person
(D) They are uncle and nephew

7. The name of the play in which Lolita is cast, which is similar to the name of the hotel in which she and Humbert first have sex, is:
(A) The Enchanted Hunter
(B) The Weary Traveler
(C) The Shipyard
(D) The Highwayman

8. At the beginning of the book, Humbert is working on:
(A) A novel about a baseball team
(B) A compendium of Russian literature
(C) A literary analysis of the writings of James Joyce
(D) An anthology of French literature for English-speaking students

9. Humbert is born in:
(A) Beardsley
(B) New York
(C) St. Petersburg, Russia
(D) Paris, France

10. How does Humbert usually refer to the camp that Lolita attends in Part One?
(A) Camp Nymphet
(B) Camp Q
(C) Camp Pubescence
(D) Camp Lolita

11. Humbert shoot and kills:
(A) No one
(B) Charlotte Haze
(C) Clare Quilty
(D) Lolita

12. After Charlotte dies, Humbert and Lolita:
(A) Spend a year driving all over the country
(B) Go to Paris, where she attends school
(C) Move immediately to Beardsley
(D) Move with the Farlows to Florida

13. The last time in the novel Humbert sees Lolita, she is:
(A) In her mid-20s with three kids
(B) About 18, married and pregnant
(C) Dead
(D) Riding her small bicycle to college in Beardsley

14. Humbert tells the Farlows that he:
(A) Is Lolita's biological father
(B) Is having an affair with Lolita
(C) Does not really love Charlotte
(D) Is a homosexual

15. Charlotte dies soon after:
(A) Learning of Lolita's death
(B) Divorcing Humbert
(C) Marrying a rich Russian soldier
(D) Discovering and reading Humbert's private journal

16. Lolita is born in:
(A) Beardsley
(B) Ramsdale
(C) New York
(D) Paris

17. Charlotte and Lolita live together in a town called:
(A) Beardsley
(B) Ramsdale
(C) Edina
(D) Bloomington

18. Where and how did Humbert's mother die?
(A) (road trip, car accident)
(B) (farm, insane bull)
(C) (picnic, lightning)
(D) (bank, violent robbery)

19. Lolita is an example of a(n):
(A) Aesthetic novel
(B) Novel of manners
(C) Absurdist play
(D) Blank-verse poem

20. Other important books by Vladimir Nabokov include:
(A) The Sound and the Fury and Tender Is the Night
(B) Dubliners and Winesburg, Ohio
(C) Pale Fire and Speak, Memory
(D) This Side of Paradise and Absalom, Absalom!

21. Lolita is Humbert's nickname for:
(A) Charlotte Haze
(B) Vivian Darkbloom
(C) Mona Gold
(D) Delores Haze

22. Humbert is first arrested at the end of the novel for:
(A) Reckless driving
(B) Raping Lolita
(C) Murdering Quilty
(D) Murdering his wife

23. The man who writes the Foreword is:
(A) A real-life lawyer and personal friend of Nabokov
(B) A man from Massachusetts who went to college with Nabokov
(C) A fictional character who is friends with Humbert's lawyer
(D) A fictional character who helps Humbert escape from jail

24. As we learn from the Foreword, Humbert:
(A) Dies before his trial begins
(B) Escapes from jail
(C) Receives a sentence of life in prison
(D) Is executed by lethal injection for first-degree murder

25. After Lolita tells Humbert that she does not want to go to school at Beardsley anymore and that she wants to leave the town, Humbert:
(A) Grounds her for two weeks and forces her to stay in school
(B) Signs her up for the school play to help her meet new friends
(C) Sets out with her on another long cross-country road trip
(D) Immediately takes her back to Ramsdale, where they live for several years

Lolita and Humbert Make Top 100 Characters

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100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900
From Book magazine, March/April 2002

1 - Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
2 - Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
3 - Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
4 - Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
5 - Rabbit Angstrom, Rabbit, Run, John Updike, 1960
6 - Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, 1902
7 - Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
8 - Molly Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
9 - Stephen Dedalus, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James
Joyce, 1916
10 - Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905
11- Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote, 1958
12 - Gregor Samsa, The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 1915
13 - The Invisible Man, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
14 - Lolita, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
15 - Aureliano Buendia, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, 1967

A Poem About Lolita

2005-02-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

Lolita
posted by slave4luke on 4/22/03 5:38 AM

he sits in a bare hotel room
staring into space
she strokes his greying hair
kisses his old face

she is not another 12 year old
playing with her time
he has blood on his hands which burns
death being his crime

love can exist in many ways
but do not seem true
lolita can cry for their love
but it's hard for you

he plays with the ace of spades
gambles with his hand
but losses don't make him cry
just this foreign land

tragic, traumatic, was their love,
young or old who cares?
whore and slime together forever
young or old i care

but just to keep them safer
keeping their lives true
love like this, is to rare to lose
they are above you

Short Summary

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Humbert Humbert, the narrator, is writing the manuscript for Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male from a jail cell, where he is incarcerated for the murder of Clare Quilty. Although he is about to be placed on trial for murder, his manuscript recounts the history of his sexual affair with a young "nymphet" named Dolores Haze, a.k.a. Lolita. Humbert writes that he has had an obsession with nymphets his whole adult life, beginning with his unrequited passion for a young girl named Annabel with whom he fell in love as a young boy. His sexual acts with Annabel were never fully satisfied, leaving a perpetual desire for young girls, fulfilled only when he falls for Lolita.

After telling about his own family life, Humbert mentions his first marriage to a woman named Valeria, a marriage that ended very badly when Valeria left him for another man on the eve of their emigration from France to America. Having never really loved her, Humbert is not too shaken up about his loss, although he does mention having several work-related mental breakdowns.

Once in America, on the advice of a friend, Humbert takes up residence in the town of Ramsdale; he rents a room in a house owned by Charlotte Haze and her daughter, Dolores (also known, in Humbert's mind, as Lolita). He immediately becomes obsessed with the 12-year-old Lolita, a nymphet who reminds him of Annabel. Charlotte and Lolita do not get along at all, however, and Charlotte decides to send Lolita off to summer camp followed by boarding school. Meanwhile, Charlotte proposes marriage to Humbert. Despite his great dislike for her, Humbert readily accepts, because the marriage will give him the opportunity to be with Lolita at all times. Lolita goes off to summer camp, and the marriage occurs while she is away, but before she returns her mother discovers Humbert's private journal. After reading of Humbert's disgust for her and lust for Lolita, Charlotte goes insane, telling Humbert that he will never see Lolita again. She runs out into the street to mail a letter to Lolita about Humbert's sick intentions, but she is suddenly hit and killed by a car.

Soon afterwards, Humbert goes to fetch Lolita from camp, although he tells her that her mother is only in the hospital. They go to a hotel for the night, where they have sex for the first time and become lovers. Humbert later tells Lolita that her mother is dead, and they begin a year-long driving tour that takes them to almost all 48 contiguous states. They see hundreds of attractions everywhere, all the while continuing their affair.

After a year, they move to Lolita's hometown, Beardsley, where Humbert enrolls Lolita in a private girls school that stresses social interaction with males above academics. Humbert, however, quickly becomes paranoid and jealous, fighting with Lolita frequently about her allowance and her associations with boys her age. Eventually, Lolita mysteriously announces that she wishes to leave Beardsley and go on another long drive, to which Humbert readily consents. While touring the nation again, however, Humbert notices that they are being followed by what appears to be a detective (we later learn that it is Clare Quilty, a demented writer with an obsession for child pornography and an intense love for Lolita). Suddenly, Lolita completely vanishes, leaving Humbert all alone. We learn at the end of the novel that she has gone off with Clare Quilty. At the time, though, Humbert does not know any details about her disappearance; he drives around by himself looking at all the places they had visited, trying to learn the truth. Later, he has a two-year love affair with an insane woman in her mid-20s named Rita.

About three years after Lolita's disappearance, Humbert receives a letter from the now 18-year-old Lolita, announcing that she is married and pregnant, and that she needs money. Humbert goes to her house and tells her that he still loves her immensely. He gives her four thousand dollars to help her and her husband, but in exchange he demands to know with whom she had disappeared on that road trip. She tells him about Quilty, which sends Humbert into a rage. He bids goodbye to Lolita for the last time before setting out to find Quilty. When he reaches Quilty's house, he breaks in with a gun, tells Quilty what a horrible man he is, then murders him. Driving away from the house, Humbert realizes that in his life he has broken virtually every moral law imaginable, so he might as well break some legal laws as well. He begins driving on the left side of the road just for fun, and he makes a practice of running red lights, which quickly gets him arrested. The police officers, seeing him covered in blood and finding his gun, arrest him and later charge him with the murder of Quilty. Humbert, who is writing this book as his testimonial for the jury, admits that he deserves to be locked up for his affair with a 12-year-old girl, but he claims that the murder of Quilty did society a favor by destroying a sick pervert.

We learn from the Foreword that Humbert died in prison and that Lolita died in childbirth a short while later. Her baby was stillborn.

Foreword

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The Foreword, written by the fictional John Ray, contextualizes the work we are about to read. Humbert Humbert, the protagonist, wrote in his jail cell Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male. Humbert died suddenly of a heart attack before his trial could start. Humbert's lawyer, C.C. Clark, has asked Ray to edit the manuscript, which Ray has agreed to do, although he does edit out some "tenacious details." He also mentions that Lolita's last name, Haze, is not her real last name, but has been changed to protect her. We learn that the crime for which Humbert would have been tried took place in September-October of 1952.

Ray goes on to mention that the book contains no obscenities, although some readers may be offended by the subject material, because the book hinges on scenes that may be considered, by some, to be obscene. Ray points out that on December 6, 1933, Judge Woolsey allowed Joyce's Ulysses to enter the United States, thus setting a precedent for the legality of literature that some may find objectionable. Ray also states that Humbert has an amazing ability to make us sympathize with him even though his actions are monstrous. He states that the book should be upheld as a type of warning to show the necessity of raising good children.