Quarter 4

The book is finally complete! I have been wondering how it could possibly come to some resolution, and now we have reached it. After embarking on a second road-trip led mostly by Lolita, Humbert starts to become suspicious that they are being followed. He soon brings Lolita to a hospital after she becomes ill, but when he returns, she is gone. Humbert goes on a two-year journey to find her and the man who took her (while seeing a woman named Rita on the side). Eventually Humbert receives a letter from Lolita and finds out she is pregnant, married, and in need of money. He finds her and gives her $4,000 after she tells him she does not want to be with him. Then, he tracks down her kidnapper (who is not her husband) and shoots him, which lands him in jail where he is writing the memoir.

So, what moral could possibly be drawn from a story about pedophilia, murder, kidnapping, incest, and rape? To answer this question, I reread the foreward, written by the fictional editor and publisher John Ray Jr., Ph.D.. He believes it is important to publish the book as a warning to all who read it for two reasons. The first is that, according to him, "had our demented diarist gone [...] to a competent psychopathologist, there would have been no disaster" (5). He claims that this tragedy was preventable and should serve as an example for that reason.

Secondly, he writes that "these are not only vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils. 'Lolita' should make all of us [...] apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation and a safer world" (6). This is his ultimate understanding of the work. He views it as a tragic tale that should be used to create change in the world, to protect children and prevent these horrendous crimes in the future.

I agree with this as a major takeaway from the book. To me, the most important element of how the novel was constructed is the first-person narration. This is one of the most unique novels I've ever read for that reason--it feels like reading a criminal's diary. You get to follow him as he describes his analysis of what made him that way, how he feels about the characters, his journey with the guilt of his crimes, what he believes the events of the story to be, and ultimately how he feels when it's all over with. You actually experience the manipulation, the justification, and the lies he tells. After reading this book, I feel as though I have a much better understanding of individuals who suffer from pedophilia, and how they go about committing their crimes.

Another major component to the story--and probably the main reason why some characters were so easily manipulated by Humbert--is that love serves to blind characters in the novel. One of the most interesting and ironic elements to me was the dynamic between Humbert manipulating others and being manipulated himself. In Part One, he manages to manipulate Charlotte in order to get close to Lolita. When she tells him to either stay because he loves her or leave because he doesn't, he ends up marrying her to convince her of his love--all to stay near Lolita. She seems not to notice his infatuation for her daughter, mostly because she is so deeply in love with him. It isn't until she opens his chest of confessional diary entries that she finally sees and accepts that he has manipulated her. After opening it, she likely doesn't love him anymore, so when he tries to convince her that "the notes [she] found were mere fragments of a novel," she "neither [answers] nor [turns]" (96). She cannot see she is being manipulated until she falls out of love with him.

Though Humbert is the manipulator in his relationship with Charlotte (and proud of it), the roles become reversed with Lolita. This is why I find the idea of "The Enchanted Hunters" so brilliant. When Lolita and Humbert first spend the night together, they stay in a hotel called "The Enchanted Hunters," which also happens to be the name of the play that Lolita participates in later in the novel. Humbert is infatuated with Lolita--she is the enchantress--and Humbert is pursuing her--he is the hunter. When this name is first brought up, the word "enchanted" seemed fairly innocent, as Humbert always talked about Lolita's beauty. She has not yet become very manipulative towards him at this point, so her role as the enchantress seems to be unintentional.

However, once she begins attending school in Beardsley and participating in the play, "The Enchanted Hunters," the meaning of the term changes. Though he notices things that are unusual, such as the fact that she stashes money away, she still has control over him. When she asks him to go upstairs with her after a large fight ending in her demands to pick the locations of their next road trip, he confesses that he has the ability "of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest," or that she brought him to tears (207). She has become enchanting in a much more intentional way than before, as though she enchants her hunter to manipulate him into letting her go.

She is successful in escaping him in the end, as she leaves the hospital without his knowledge with Clare Quilty. Perhaps if Humbert had not been so blinded by his love for her, he would not only have noticed the unusual behavior, but seen through her manipulation and prevented her escape.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Lolita, as it taught me a lot about manipulation and how it is carried out. It is how people like Humbert commit their crimes, but in some cases it is also how they eventually lose the battle. It is easy to see people like Charlotte in the story and in real-life cases (not just with criminals) and wonder how they could have been so easily played, but a lot of it has to do with their relationship to the manipulator. If you love someone, you don't want to believe that they have done something wrong, particularly in this case since Charlotte realizing Humbert's manipulation meant coming to terms with the fact that her love was always unrequited.

I took away a lot of lessons from this novel, mostly pertaining to the mind of a criminal, and I'm really glad I read it for that reason. I hope those who read along had an equally good experience, and I look forward to reading about their takeaways from this brilliant novel.