Lolita
by Nathan Gale
In Lolita we have described to us a man, Humbert, well rounded and educated as he may be, that is constantly beset with alienation from the world around him. This alienation blossoms from his eerie desires towards nubile girls, and sets him apart from both men of his age and women of his age. Beginning with his first love Annabel who remains a figurehead or model of sorts in which he placates and reshapes across different experience with women until final he finds that perfect replacement in twelve year old Lolita. This fascination could be interpreted as pedophile, yet pedophile seems a label to easily given. His desire stems from perhaps a younger identity that existed purely in innocence without adult anxiety, trying to recreate that feeling upon other young girls may be his only way of connecting with a loss of innocence.
Humbert's Character is similar to Camus character Meursault in The Stranger, in the way he is both at once intelligent but sarcastic and spiteful towards the world at large. Like Humbert drifts through the younger years of his life without true passion, aimlessly floating between marriage and prostitutes who never truly harness the type of passion he seeks. it seems here Humbert is avert towards anything, almost nihilistic and cold towards the world. The only time he becomes animated is when is fantasying about young girls, who often induce him to nerves breakdowns and stays in mental institutions.
He describes Lolita initial as: “....the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors ( and this is how I see Lolita).”
Here she becomes ethereal equal to a moment of bliss where nothing matters, like that he felt by the shore with Annabel .
Through Lolita he is perversely seeking a part of himself where he once felt free and alive, as he did with . Just as an artist seeks his subject, Humbert's has become youth and innocence. His way of reproducing that feeling although is purely carnal and voyeuristic, as he can find no other way to express his feeling of past experiences. he must physically supplicate Lolita's body in order to fulfill something at once innocence and vulgar inside his own mind.
You do a good job of laying out HH's psychological motivations for his actions. And I think, based on what he is giving us, this is exactly what he wants us to read into the text. But remember what I said about trusting HH's presentation of his story? Let me point out two things in your response that might suggest that HH isn't exactly being straight with us:
ReplyDelete1) I like your connection with Camus, here--and I do think that there is a connection, but Nabokov is playing around with it. Take this quote from HH: "Inventive Humbert was to be, I hinted, chief consultant in the production of a film dealing with existentialism, still a hot thing at the time." Obviously, HH doesn't take Hollywood seriously, nor does he take seriously the audience whom this lie is directed at. Thus, the "existentialism" in question seems to be treated as a dig or a passing fad. This isn't to say that there is no connection between HH and Meursault--but I think it's an ironic one. Look into this.
2) "Beginning with his first love Annabel who remains a figurehead or model of sorts in which he placates and reshapes across different experience with women until final he finds that perfect replacement in twelve year old Lolita." Yes, you're right, this is what HH tells us. But doesn't it all seem too perfect? Too Freudian? HH has already expressed his distaste for psychiatry and his love of toying with psychoanalysts that look for this kind of stuff. Not only that, but the entire episode with Annabel is culled from Edgar Allen Poe's poem "Annabel Lee"--something crafty HH would be very familiar with; he quotes it often throughout the narrative.
HH WANTS us to sympathize with him, wants us to see him as a tragic anti-hero who is really just misunderstood. Keep an eye out for HH's double, his shadow image--Claire Quilty. What is the difference between the two?
Be careful buying into HH's game.
Watch some small editing things--missing words, word choice issues (e.g. "supplicate").
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