Humbert and Reader Share Some Revelations

Since I am home sick and I completely forgot that we were to present our discoveries in Lolita today I thought I would at least post them. I have two discoveries, more like things that intrigued me as I read though, because they come from two of my favorite quotes in Lolita. The first is on page 140 and comes from the following quote:

"More and more uncomfortable did Humbert feel. It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed."

I love this quote for the fact that it is an early realization by Humbert about what has occurred between him and Lolita. This is the scene in the car right after the morning that he was "seduced" by Lolita. He realizes that he finally obtained the thing/person he always wanted but now she is no longer that person. From this moment on their relationship is completely different. The nymphet he longed for is no longer there and she will never been the innocent, fragile creature he so craved before. This is both the readers and Humbert's realization/discovery in this quote.

The other discovery is from the quote that begins on page 277 with "She closed..." and ends on page 279 with "Tell me only this."

This long and detailed quote is not so much a realization for Humbert in the book, but one especially for the reader. Throughout this work the reader encounters this man that they view as a monster and pedophile. This is where we get to see that he is a human too, and that he does love her in all her forms. As he says he loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted. Nabokov creates a villain that we can all sympathize with in the end, and that is what makes him someone we can all identify with. As human beings we fall in love and we try not to cross that line from it being love and passion, to an obsession that consumes us. We all want that kind of love that consumes us, but Humbert is a man that takes it too far. This is what Nabokov writes about in his works, the extremes of human emotion and life.

This is why even though we love to hate Humbert he is still one of my favorite literary characters!