Quarter 3

This week's post will be a bit different than the other two; rather than focusing on a particular aspect of the novel, I would like to dedicate my entire post to something I have alluded to in the previous posts but have not gone in depth about. The more I read this novel, the more similarities I find between Humbert Humbert, the narrator, and Bob Berchtold of Abducted in Plain Sight. For those who did not read my other posts, Abducted in Plain Sight is a must-see documentary that follows the story of a pedophile who manipulated one family beyond belief in order to get to the young girl whom he loved, Jan. Though I will be spoiling some parts soon, you should still go watch it. Every minute of this documentary is insane, trust me.

Let's start with the obvious--they're both tales about pedophiles. Humbert and Bob are about middle-aged at the time of the events, and they both have become infatuated with young girls, Lolita and Jan. The young girls have at least one living family member whom they live with at the time that the story takes place.

Now, before anything actually illegal happens, the two men admire the girls from afar. They both have ways of preserving their admiration for the children in private--Humbert has his journal, and Bob takes photographs of Jan. While they admire from a distance, they grow close to the families of the girls. Humbert doesn't make much of an effort to get in Charlotte's good graces (Lolita's mom) at this stage, but Bob becomes very good friends with Jan's parents. He comes over frequently and attempts for his family and Jan's family to become extremely close.

Soon, it becomes too inconvenient to deal with the families, though for different reasons. Both Bob and Humbert view the parents of the girls as roadblocks and have for most of the story. Bob works around the parents for a long time, probably because it's not a fictional story and he can't control the outcome, so he has to be much more careful. He manipulates them in numerous ways: convincing them to let him sleep in Jan's bed as part of his "therapy" and creating situations which he could use as blackmail against them (i.e. getting them both to cheat on each other with him), all the while building an extreme sense of trust.

Humbert's plan is equally as extreme in that he marries Charlotte and convinces her that her love for him is reciprocated only so he can stay close to Lolita. However, throughout Lolita, Humbert typically acts in response to events rather than scheming them up himself. In this case, Charlotte writes him a letter professing her love in which she tells him unless he loves her back, he should "at once, pack and leave" (67). Therefore, he only has two options: marry her or never see Lolita again. In this way, Bob is the far more devious pedophile, creating his plot from scratch, whereas Humbert makes his up as he goes along.

The next stage of the stories is eliminating the parents. Charlotte tells Humbert that Lolita will go "straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then--Beardsley College" (83). Once again, the threat of Lolita being taken from him over Charlotte's decisions makes him feel as though the only option is to kill her. But, before he does, she is killed in an accident.

Bob, being far more intelligent, has a more elaborate plan. He convinces Jan's mom to let him take her horseback riding one afternoon, then kidnaps her and drugs her. In this way, he has her all to himself even if the parents are not completely out of the picture. Even if they tried to get involved, he could blackmail them with the adultery they both committed.

Next, in order to convince the girls to give in to their desires, they must manipulate them. Humbert's plan is not well thought out and is fairly unsuccessful long-term, though he calls it a "marvel of primitive art" (106). He decides to "tell Lolita her mother was about to undergo a major operation at an invented hospital, and then keep moving with [her] from inn to inn while her mother got better and better and finally died" (106). So yeah, not great. His plan is foiled after she asks a very reasonable question: "Can I call my mom?" Apparently he didn't think of that one.

The only true threat he ever makes in regards to her attempting to leave him is when he claims she will be "analyzed and institutionalized" and end up in a "juvenile detention home" (151). Though this works on Lolita at first, it is not an effective plan long-term. Like the previous plot, she will realize at some point that she can escape without this consequence.

Bob on the other hand comes up with one of the most brilliant yet unsettling plan I have ever heard. He drugs Jan, straps her to a bed in his RV, and plays a tape on his recorder that he created in which he informs her she has been abducted by aliens, her father is not her real father, her real father is an alien, she is half-alien, and in order to save the planet, she must have a child with the chosen male before she turns 16. As a half-awake drugged 12-year-old, I don't blame her for believing this. Obviously, Bob is the chosen male, and given that she trusts him like her father, she explained that she was relieved it was him. The most successful piece of this lie is that she is instructed not to speak about it to anyone or have any contact with other males, or else her sister will go blind or her father will die. With that, she needed no more convincing.

As far as actually making the children have intercourse with them, Humbert claims he doesn't need to do much of anything. According to him, Lolita was the seductress the first time. However, she becomes more opposed to it as the book progresses, and he resorts to paying her. She really has no concrete reason to go along with Humbert's wishes besides the power dynamic which is subject to change as she grows older and more independent.

These two methods of manipulation have extremely different outcomes. For Jan, she wholeheartedly believed in the alien backstory until the age of 16, save a few brief moments of questioning. To be fair, she was 12 when she was convinced of this while drugged and reinforced by a grown man whom she trusted. She never told a soul about it until after she realized the world didn't end despite her childlessness. In fact, she believed it so strongly that her plan for her 16th birthday was to buy a gun, ask her sister if she was willing to take over the mission, and if she wasn't, she would kill her and then kill herself. Bob was obviously extremely good at manipulating her.

Humbert, on the other hand, isn't quite the mastermind he believes himself to be. In this section, we're already seeing Lolita gain more and more control of the situation, not submitting nearly as often as she supposedly used to. Though Humbert claims Lolita seduced him the first time, Lolita later asks him, "What was the name of that hotel [...] where you raped me?" (202). She becomes increasingly more interested in other boys and men, which makes Humbert paranoid of losing her, fearing "that she might accumulate sufficient cash to run away" (185). Lolita, unlike Jan, seems as though she is trying to manipulate Humbert, plotting a scheme of her own to escape him.

As you can tell, these two stories have quite a bit in common.My first takeaway in this analysis is this: Bob's crafty manipulation did not keep Jan forever, so I have no reason to believe Humbert will be any more successful in keeping Lolita. We are already seeing hints that she will eventually escape his grasp, and I predict it will come to fruition in the last quarter (being as that's the only other place it could happen).

Second, the fact that there are this many parallels between this fictional pedophile and a real-life pedophile proves either one of two things: Nabokov is a good enough writer that he can accurately portray a pedophile, or he is one.

In conclusion, I am still suspicious of Nabokov, and I want everyone to go watch Abducted in Plain Sight. Thank you for reading.