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 supposedly 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.