Trust Issues And Sweetmeats!

Never trust a first person narrator. Think back to Catcher in the Rye, to Holden Caulfield and his particular struggles, his coming of age, his naivety and misconceptions. In Lolita, Humbert Humbert is Nabokov’s take on a first person narrator that seems to relate to Holden, but pierces a very different human quality, one that focuses on love and relationships instead of the masses and societal pressures. Although this is an atrocious understatement of both books, Catcher was my best experience to parallel this novel and give a first impression of how to meet Humbert.

The narrative is intensely personal, seeming to portray an incredibly honest account (“I still squirm and emit low moans of remembered embarrassment”(Nabokov, 54)) of pedophilia and its split nature. He makes it clear from the start he feels he is not a monster, but a normal man afflicted. He pities himself, in regards to his lack of taste in flashy women, he claims “which goes to show how dreadfully stupid poor Humbert always was in matters of sex”(Nabokov, 25). Later, “Despite my manly looks, I am horribly timid”(Nabokov, 53). Frequently, he calls Lo a little devil, and acts as if she corrupts him. His personal appeal is also accomplished by his frequent cries directly to the reader, breaking the fourth wall and addressing his audience. He even makes it clear from the very beginning of the story he is a “murderer”(Nabokov, 9) and brings up his lawyers, creating the appearance his audience is a jury and this text an appeal to pity (because he sure isn’t sorry) or insanity in court. He claims “I want my learned readers to participate in the scene I am about to replay; I want them to examine its every detail and see for themselves”(Nabokov, 57). Earlier, he claims “If and when you wish to sizzle me to death, remember that only a spell of insanity could ever give me the simple energy to be a brute”(Nabokov, 47). The view we gain of Humbert is of an animal, rabid, salivating over his prey. He has incredibly evil and immoral motives-like entertaining the debate whether he should simply kill Lo when she loses her nymphet magic, or having a child with her and taking it on as a replacement years down the road, "practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad"(Nabokov, 174). Sick, but still there is this incredible sense of pity because he cannot control himself, his affliction parasitic and irreversible.

I absolutely love it. Reading it is a guilty pleasure, a compact analyzation of such dark subject matter framed by charm that slowly decays. In reference to Good Readers and Good Writers, Nabokov does an amazing job at creating a world in which nothing from reality exists. Although his characters come from an enormous range of backgrounds, styles, and voices, he strongly grounds them in a story telling truth (much like Tim O'Brien does in The Things They Carried) that needs no extrapolation by the reader. This allows the reader to focus solely on the characters and how the relationship between Humbert and Dolores develops, ultimately the entire purpose of the narrative. Nabokov starts the book very slowly, establishing Humbert's character long before he meets Lolita and gives him a personality before we identify him as a monster. The persona that we meet in Europe is educated, brutal, and entirely calculated, perhaps a pedophile, however does not connote the festering, the ghastliness he develops after his nymphet punishes him for years. He is attracted, but restrained, creating a parallel to many people in the real world, resisting their desires for the sake of their reputation or standing.