lolita

A detailed Summary of lolita

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, is narrated by Humbert Humbert, the main character and villain of the book. At first it seems that because of his actions it is obvious that the reader will hate him and sympathize with the other main character Lolita. His clever narration though, leads the reader to sympathize with or even accept his feelings, actions and the way that he presents the events of the book. Humbert filters everything and tells the story in a way makes it seem completely different that what it is in actuality. He makes it into a tragic love story when in reality it is just about a sick twisted man who rapes a little girl and ruins her life. Humbert makes himself look completely innocent and naive, which is what makes the reader sympathize with him. By the end of the book it is hard to determine if it was even his fault at all and it is hard to decide whom to feel sorry for, the real victim Lolita, or the narrator and pedophile Humbert Humbert.

Throughout the book Humbert casts the blame (for his actions) on everyone and everything but himself. This is a good tactic he uses because the reader rationalizes many of the events by blaming them on the same things that he blamed. One of the first things that he blames is his su

Finally and most importantly he blames Lolita for his actions. He makes it seem that he was a naive victim and that it was her controlling him all along. Fist of all there is theory about how Lolita is not really a child but a nymphet, he says (about nymphets), "they reveal their true nature which is not human but nymphic (that is demonic)" (16). He then says about Lolita after having sex with her for the first time that her body was "the body of some immortal demon disguised as a child" (139). He tries to make it seem like it is she who sucks him in and forces him to do all those things to her. He even says that the first time that they had sex was not because of desire on the part of him but because Lolita seduced him into it. He also makes it seem that while he was nervous and unsure Lolita was this pushy kid who had had sex many times before. He basically defames her throughout the book therefore making him and his actions more acceptable in the ideas of the reader.

pposedly tortured past. He tells the story of he had a childhood fixation with a "girl child" and how they were madly in love and then she died. He goes on to say how her loss traumatized him and led to his obsession with young girls, he says "there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain girl child. In a princedom by the sea" (9). He goes on later to say "All I want to stress is that my discovery of Lolita was a fatal consequence of that princedom by the sea in my tortured past" (40). Humbert uses his past as an excuse by portraying the feeling that he somehow cant help himself he makes it seem like he has some kind of disorder. Using this argument the reader comes to believe that he sick so he can't really b

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Approximate Word count = 1160
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels