Quarter 1

Since this is the first post of the blog, here is the brief summary of my goals: I will be reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov over the course of the month, and blogging once I reach the quarter checkpoints. 317 total pages works out to be about 79 pages per entry, which is exactly where I'm at.

For those who won't be reading along with me, our main character is Humbert Humbert, and he is a pedophile. The story is framed as a manuscript about Humbert's life, which has been sent to John Ray Jr. to be published posthumously as Humbert has died in prison. So far in his memoir, he has failed in his adolescent romance with Annabel, developed an obsession with young girls (whom he calls "nymphets"), married and divorced an adultress named Valeria, and ultimately ended up in the Haze household. Here we are introduced to the two other main characters: Mrs. Charlotte Haze and her daughter, Dolores Haze, whom Humbert calls Lolita. She is his newest nymphet.

Given that the novel is framed as a memoir, the only true way that characters are described is through Humbert's view of them. The one exception of this is the way that Nabokov characterizes Humbert himself through his narration of the tale. I find him to be an incredibly interesting and complex character, who frequently contradicts his view of himself. On one hand, he gives the reader a sense of his arrogance in that he believes he "could obtain at the snap of [his] fingers any adult female" of his choosing and he has "all the characteristics which [...] start the responses stirring in a little girl: clean-cut jaw, muscular hand, deep sonorous voice, broad shoulder" (25, 43).

On the other hand, when he is around Lolita, this perfect, manly persona begins to dissipate. All of a sudden, he becomes "lanky, big-boned, wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows and a queer accent" (44). He almost confesses to the reader, "Despite my manly looks, I am horribly timid" (53). In this way, Nabokov paints the picture that Humbert is conflicted with how he views himself, both wanting to be Lolita's secret fantasy and not living up to it.

He also complicates the reader's view of his mental state. He is critical of his ex-wife's lover in how she is his "child-wife," and he speaks to her "as if she were absent, and also as if she were a kind of little ward that was in the act of being transferred," though Humbert himself is in love with an actual child and views her as an object to conquer (28). He briefly mentions his stay at a sanatorium but plays the visit off as though he was the one outsmarting the psychiatrists, finding "an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with [them]" (34). He also creates multiple personas, referring to himself in the third person while suggesting that "a brave Humbert would have played with [Lolita] most disgustingly," almost disappointed in himself for not molesting her (53). His frequent third-person narrative almost suggests that he does not view his true self as responsible for his crimes. It is fairly unclear to me what he truly thinks of himself--whether he is critical of his own actions or views them as wrong or immoral.

But yet again, there is a contradiction in that he does not want to ruin Lolita's innocence, stating, "I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to protect the purity of that twelve-year-old child" (63). Through the details that are included and the lenses through which Humbert views himself, he is simultaneously arrogant, timid, and hypocritical. He is willing to admit he received treatment but not that he needed it, and that he wanted to molest Lolita but insists he does not to ruin her innocence. Like I said, quite the complex character.

Since the book is a first-person narrative, our only sense of the other characters is through Humbert's eyes. Therefore, Lolita is characterized by his relationship with her. It is quite obvious how Humbert feels about Lolita, embarking on flowery, lengthy tangents about her youthful beauty every time she is near. He frequently refers to her as "my Lolita," always possessive of her as though she is something to be conquered. One of the most striking images Humbert depicts of her is through the analogy of his spider web. He describes how his "web is spread all over the house," and as he listens for Lolita, he "gently [tugs] on the silk," hoping to catch his "beautiful warm-colored prey" (49). The image is haunting but overwhelmingly impactful. Humbert views her as innocent prey, helpless to his attempts to catch her. But this view is not demeaning, Humbert seemingly worships the girl, describing her on nearly every page.

In contrast, Humbert views Mrs. Haze as an obstacle and characterizes her as such. He often avoids even using her name, referring to her as "the lady," "[Lolita's] mother," "Haze," "our chaperone," and "landlady.'' He evidently does not care much about her at all given that he assigned her daughter a loving nickname which he calls her out of adoration, and he barely even refers to Mrs. Haze by name at all. It is also incredibly interesting to me how the scenes are constructed, in that they mostly follow a similar pattern. Any time Humbert becomes close to Lolita, they are interrupted by Mrs. Haze. She tells Lolita to go to bed when he begins to touch her back, she speaks to them as his hand reaches Lolita's thigh in the car, and she calls Lolita after Humbert's first sexual experience involving her. Humbert acknowledges this, writing, "for almost three weeks I had been interrupted in all my pathetic machinations. The agent of these interruptions was usually the Haze woman" (56). Since Mrs. Haze is a roadblock in his path to Lolita, she must be eliminated.

This is the aspect of the story that was the eeriest to me. It just so happens that immediately prior to reading this book, I watched the Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, which is about a real-life pedophile case. Bob Berchtold, the abductor, was obsessed with a young girl named Jan and viewed her parents as being in the way of his attempts to get to her. The language used in the two stories is shockingly similar, so much so that I continue to question whether Vladimir Nabokov is a pedophile himself. His ability to portray one is certainly convincing. If you don't want to sit through a 317-page book, Abducted in Plain Sight is a great alternative that certainly gets the point about pedophilia across.

I'd like to thank anyone who was willing to make it this far in this blog post. Seeing as it was the first one, I had quite a few thoughts to get out. Check in next week for my thoughts on the complete first half!