What Does Lolita Symbolize

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” Told in the perspective of the culprit himself, author Vladimir Nabokov dives into the mind of a pedophile who desperately tries to hide his mad behavior from society. Once in love with a young girl named Annabel, who later dies of typhoid fever, Humbert can’t seem to fully recover from her sudden passing. As years go by, Annabel’s image remains embedded within his memory. On meeting Dolores Haze, he becomes enraptured by her boyish charm and delicate frame because it stands as a physical reminder of Humbert’s long lost love; however, Lolita is only twelve years old, and he, thirty-six. Although he tangles himself in an immoral relationship, his teenage years and character development by the end
His manipulative obsession over his “step-daughter” intensifies as the story progresses: finding pleasure in having her leg brush up against his thigh, giving her an allowance and then taking it away because “you see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go”, and finally, shooting the lover who impregnates and leaves her out in the cold. This unsound fixation on Lolita is a result of an unresolved mental conflict from years prior; this madness, whether through his unfortunate past or clever use of linguistic patterns, makes the reader involuntarily pity the pedophile. How can this be? Humbert himself confesses, “In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child.” This girl-child being Annabel, in this line, he admits to having a major problem, making the reader wonder what if she didn’t die? His admission seduces the reader into feeling sorry for his mental anguish because perhaps there could have been a way to prevent his pedophilic behavior. Annabel’s death at the “nymphet phase” froze his perception of ideal lovers at that specific point in time, and although he aged, he remained mesmerized by young girls, ages nine to fourteen. Despite marrying women his age, he did not overcome the illegal