Lolita
Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
Lolita has become a popular book in colleges because of its controversiality and its power to arouse discussion. It is the story of the middle-aged Humbert Humbert and his obsession with the pre-adolescent Dolores Haze, or Lolita.
The leading actor, Humbert Humbert, is writing the manuscript for Lolita or the Confession of a White Widowed Male in prison, where he is caged for the murder of Clare Quilty. Although he is about to be placed on trial for murder, his manuscript narrates the history of his sexual affair with a young "nymphet" named Dolores Haze, known as Lolita. Humbert writes that he has had an obsession with nymphets his whole adult life, beginning with his unrequited passion for a young girl named Annabel with whom he fell in love as a young boy. Whatever happens to a boy during the summer he is 14, can mark him for life. But Annabel soon died of typhus. The shock of her death froze something in Humbert.He kept looking for Annabel, long after he left his own childhood behind. His lusts for Annabel were never fully satisfied, leaving an everlasting desire for young girls.
After doing odd writing jobs, Humbert lands in the New England town of Ramsdale, on the advice of a friend, he rents a room in a house owned by Charlotte Haze and her daughter, Dolores (also known, in Humbert's mind, as Lolita). He immediately becomes obsessed with the 12-year-old Lolita, a nymphet who reminds him of Annabel. Charlotte and Lolita do not get along at all, however, and Charlotte decides to send Lolita off to summer camp followed by boarding school. Meanwhile, Charlotte proposes marriage to Humbert. Despite his great dislike for her, Humbert readily accepts, because the marriage is the only chance to keep Lolita in his life. But Charlotte discovers Humbert's private journal. After reading of Humbert's disgust for her and lust for Lolita, Charlotte goes insane, telling Humbert that he will never see Lolita again. She runs out to mail a letter to Lolita, but she is suddenly hit and killed by a car.
Soon afterwards, Humbert picks Lolita up at camp. They go to a hotel for the night, where they have sex for the first time and become lovers. Humbert later tells Lolita that her mother is dead.
After one-year-long driving tour, they move to Lolita's hometown, Beardsley, where Humbert enrolls Lolita in a private girls school. Humbert, however, quickly becomes paranoid and jealous; Lolitas desire to socialize with boys strains their relationship. Eventually, Lolita mysteriously announces that she wishes to leave Beardsley and go on another long drive. While touring the nation again, however, Humbert notices that they are being followed by what appears to be a detective. Suddenly, Lolita completely vanishes. At the time, though, Humbert does not know any details about her disappearance; he drives around looking at all the places they had visited, trying to learn the truth. But he failed.
Three years later, Humbert receives a letter from the now 18-year-old Lolita, announcing that she is married and pregnant, and that she needs money. Humbert visits her and tells her that he still loves her immensely. He gives her four thousand dollars to help her, but in exchange he demands to know with whom she had disappeared on that road trip. She tells him about Quilty, which sends Humbert into a rage. He bids goodbye to Lolita .When he reaches Quilty's house, he breaks in with a gun, tells Quilty what a horrible man he is, and then murders him. The police officers soon arrest him and later charge him with the murder of Quilty.
Humbert died soon, Lolita died while giving childbirth that Christmas.
I knew Lolita when I was 12 for the first time. My father hid the Lolita movie in order to avoid my curiosity. It was an erotic movie in public opinion. Several years later, I happened to watch the movie which deeply struck me. The pure, true love of Humbert moved me: not everyone would express love this way. It is said that the love of Humbert is deceptive and sexual, obviously it is. But I guess it is forgivable when it is out of affection. There is not a single obscene term is Lolita, and fans of erotic are likely to find it a fake. Lolita blazes, however, with a perversity of a most original kind. Lolita is a novel of uncommon power.
Ive watched the movie and the book so many times that I can easily recite most of its dialogue. Nabokov's facility with the written word was so acute as to be vaguely disquieting. The first time a novel provoked me into a stunned written word. The bittersweet realization that this Russian could wield the English language with more grace, wit and skill than I could ever hope to in my wildest dreams
It is a tragic love story, a work of comic genius. Most of all it is Nabokovs writing: artfully crafted the book is a delight to read and re-readas is necessary to uncover some of its secrets. This is an amazing book. As I read it, I realized how powerful language can be, because Nabokov bedazzles you with his story. You feel yourself going along with his main character's opinions as he ingratiates himself in Delores' mother's life, seduces Delores.... even when you know that what he's doing is wrong. What Humbert does is unforgivable; the reader is entranced by the story. It is a peculiar thing that Nabokov has wrought here, but it is brilliant. Few novels are both tragedy and comedy perfectly. Lolita is a major work of fiction; it is also a shocking book.
Lolita is a tale - perhaps a moral tale - of lust-drenched obsession. The twist is that the obsessed character is a man in his late thirties and the object of his attentions is a twelve-year-old girl. As we read the "memoirs" of Humbert Humbert, the pedophile, we are given to understand that he has been apprehended and are writing from some sort of limit.
There's been a good deal of criticism leveled at Lolita on "moral" grounds. And to be fair, a very witty, very cleverly written book about pedophilia, sympathetic to a pedophile, would probably deserve all the humiliation it came in for. But there's more to Lolita than sex and verbal acrobatics: Nabokov does actually provide the reader with some moral pressure in the end, if one cares to look for it. Without spoiling the ending, in the closing pages of the novel Nabokov wipes the glamour from his readers' eyes. We see Lolita and Humbert, finally, for their true selves, and there's a powerful moral lesson to be drawn from these views. I think those who criticize the book as "immoral" neglect the ending and overlook Nabokov's subtle yet profound commentary on the nature of real love.
Humbert lost Lolita eventually. He pled for no guilty all along. Look back to his whole life, he ruined Lolita as well as himself. Did he confess from the bottom of his heart? Did he repent utterly? I dont know. But I know that you may hate it, love it, or both (as I did) but you cant help but respecting the man who write it .It is definitely remorseless.
A forbidden love. An unthinkable attraction. The ultimate price. Essential reading, strong recommended.
Lolita, cant be missed.
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