The Reputation In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

Very few books are capable of eliciting the same notoriety than that of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. A story told solely through the mind of a pedophile in love, Lolita has become one of the most arduous books to read, which consequently made it one of the most talked about during the mid twentieth century. With a plot immensely difficult to ingest, and a protagonist with hauntingly low morals and an indisputable fondness of word play, Lolita was and still remains a landmark book with undisputable prominence. With such a serious topic written in the midst of a highly conservative era, both Lolita and Nabokov received disturbed reactions from offended audiences. The reputation of Lolita most notably is due to the misinterpretation of the character
In the early stages of Lolita’s success Nabokov states during an interview with CBS how “the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage” (Boyd). Nabokov added to this response by explaining that the gorilla in his eyes represented Humbert, who has become so immersed in his own inaccessible desires that he is unable to see beyond the realm of his fictitious reality (Boyd). Much like the gorilla in his cage, Humbert Humbert is ludicrous in his ambition when pursuing such unattainable love with Lolita, and furthermore is unable of seeing beyond his cage, and grasping that his love for Lolita will inevitably end unpleasantly. And, despite Nabokov’s rejections in social commentary, Humberts abuse towards Lolita and the empathy inflicted by the readers also shows themes of destruction, and how all those in power perniciously corrupt those they are oppressing, even if both parties are in an agreement. Nabokov’s book was not written for erotic purposes, however the interpretation of the character during the 1960s attributes to the misinterpretation to the text as a whole. A book intentionally about destruction, power and ignorance becomes a book overshadowed by a desire to alter Lolita’s appearance and mannerisms, thus altering the meaning and perception of Humbert’s story as a