Vladimir Nabokov

Carleigh Craparo
12.3.12
English

Lolita can be described as a controversial book that can draw the readers in and cause them to feel sympathetic towards a man who is a murderer, pedophile, predator, and an egomaniac. The author, Vladimir Nabokov, seduced the readers’ minds’ with numerous elements about Humbert to distract them from his true evil tendencies. Humbert is the main character of Lolita and describes his life story from an American jail cell. He begins to describe his childhood and how he was struck by his first love named Annabel Leigh. They were deeply attracted to one another and attempted to make love for the first time, however, they are interrupted and never able to follow through because Annabel died shortly after. Throughout
Humbert mainly writes in long sentences and uses elegant words to transpose the reader’s feelings towards his lustful desire. Humbert was raised by a multicultural father who gave Humbert the ability to become multilingual and have an impressive education. He feeds the readers’ minds’ with fancy words such as etiolated, sartorial, truculently, Lucerne, platitudinous, or even neuralgic. Humbert is able to distract the reader from the evil in his thoughts by using his literary illusions, ornate style, and multilingual puns. Also, Vladimir creatively uses anagrams throughout his writing such as a character’s name is Vivian Darkbloom, which correlates with the author’s name Vladimir
He desperately attempts for the readers to understand his shameful past and makes excuses for the actions he made. He is an unreliable narrator and rarely reveals how the scenes truly play out. Humbert gives the story in a biased manner and is overwhelmed in his self-delusion. He is constantly looking for sympathy and wants the reader to be as perverse as he is. Many say that he battles between beauty and lust. He pretends that he is appreciating beauty and completely voids his ethics and morals. Sadly, lust ultimately wins and he overtakes Lolita’s innocence. Again, Humbert blames Quilty for taking Lolita’s innocence when it was truly Humbert himself. He somewhat understands his actions were wrong when he begins to express regret, “Reader! What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic—one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter […] I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope […] and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord” Humbert is an evil man that will not accept his pedophiliac