Is He Good or Bad? Final Thoughts

As readers, we follow the growing Lolita around from hotel to motel with her "father" as they engage in explicit activities that satisfy H.H., but destroy Lolita. In parts of the book it mentions her saying: "Oh no. Not again." Yet she has to give in to his wants because as H.H. himself has said: "By rubbing this all in, I succeeded in terrorizing Lolita in obeying me." He had told her that without him her life would be worthless. That had she confessed to police officers what they had been doing, she was a but mere orphan an would live a useless poor life. And the naive Lo believed this and reluctantly dragged on, swearing at him and expression thoughts of hatred towards him. He did give her a pleasant life besides her "daily duties". He enrolled her in an all-girls school and signed her up for drama and tennis classes. He had particularly liked the way she played tennis as it had accentuated her figure. But this child was not happy. H.H. was a pleasure addict when at times she would say: "Please. Please, leave me alone." He would obey but she had had enough.
When a man keeps following them in his red convertible as they make their way around America, he eventually kidnaps and frees Lolita from him. She moves on and goes on without seeing him from three years. He wallows in his solitude, desperately desiring her and wishing he had taped her so he could remind himself of her beautiful face. Trying to find where she was, he had failed. H.H. wrote poems about Lolita and smelt her clothes and belongings. He really did miss her.
Lola writes to him saying how she had married a good man and was pregnant with his baby. She had asked for money, ignoring their past. H.H. comes to their house and privately talking to Lolita, a girl of seventeen now, to come live with him. A surprisingly romantic outburst he blubbers of how he wants them to die together. She simply rejects him. There is no chance. I'm sorry.
He still gives her the amount of money she wanted plus $4000 more! And in that time, that was an amazing amount even from a generous father. He cries softly and goes away have an epiphany of what he has done. He realizes that he has deprived her of a normal childhood. He understands that he has caused her harm and robbed her of her innocence and purity. He eventually goes a bit mad and murders the Lola's kidnapper that took her away from him in the first place. Despite this, I believe H.H. to be a good person. He's troubled, but he is a good person. After reading this novel, I'll explain why.
First of all, just because he is attracted to nymphets doesn't make him a bad person. Love mutates, attraction mutates. We must accept that love does flow in different forms, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. We can also see that despite the fact that Lola is no longer a nymphet, H.H. still loves her and wants to be with her. Had H.H. and Lola been married and not step-daughter and step-father then this would have been perfectly acceptable. H.H. does make a good point where he said that in the Roman Catholic Church girls can marry at 12 to any man of any age. And 15 is the universal age for marriage. If you think about it, had they been married, everything would have changed.
H.H. is hopelessly in love with Lolita and of course I can attest to the fact that he does display impossible lust for her. But it real is a true love. He tried to be a father figure as best as he could. He bought her things and sent her to school and abide by her wishes. He was blinded though perhaps by his passionate love that he conducted activities which he had no control over.
He loves. He doesn't kill. Even though H.H. murders Lola's kidnapper, I believe his madness was fueled by Lola's final rejection to him. His life, Lola, rejected him and thus he regretted the very source that took her away from him in the first place, the kidnapper. I know that H.H. is not really a murderer because he didn't kill Charlotte Haze when he had the chance. He didn't kill her, even though he could. He's not a murderer, even though he killed.
In the end, despite Lola being married and leaving H.H. to exist in solitude, he still wishes her all the best of joy and happiness. And this is what love is: wishing the other person happiness even though you won't be there to share it with him/her.
This is the most bold, shockingly audacious love story I have ever read. Nabokov talked about in his after word how many publishers would not publish his book. It is a forbidden book, even to this day. As the author stated, "I didn't write this book to teach anything." And I love that- the very simplicity of a story, not a fable intro woven into literary work. Sometimes you just need to hear a story. Despite the author's intention of not teaching anything, I still learned something from this book. That is a newfound understanding of diversity and tolerance for it. Let's think about this. Had Lolita and H.H. married with each other consent, could there be plea for their relationship?
I conclude, that banned books should never be banned. The very fact that they are banned does increase our desire to read it more. The forbidden fruit does taste that much sweeter. If the content of the book displeases you, then quite politely put: Don't read it. Nobody forces you to read anything. Surely, educational institutions don't force us to read about love scenes. If you don't want your children to read it, then protect them from that. Make sure it's not in their reach. Such daring books are necessary even, for our imaginations to grow. Great writing holds the ability to transport us and expose us to worlds and situations we never thought possible. Police officers can imprison criminals for rape, murder, etc... but who gave them the right to imprison fictional criminals and fictional ideas?

He's the One With Wants

H.H. tells his family friends who knew Charlotte well, that he is the real father of Lolita. He plans on taking Lolita on a trip when he picks her up from camp. He would tell her that her mother was in the hospital and that her situation is grave, while they hop from inn to inn together. Eventually he would say that she died. H.H. states that Lola loves him back. He says: "It was she who seduced me." She's the one who said: "You've never done it!" And he responded: "Never." She said: "Well, this is how it works." OH WOW! What a liar! He was married after all to Valerie and Lo's mom! H.H. keeps hinting that Lolita is this whorish child that seduces him and wants him with as much passion as he has. Believe it or not, he says, I was not her first lover. I don't believe in the power of seduction. If you're effected by it that means you want to be affected by it, because you don't fight it. Lust is in all of us; we are humans after all. We crave intimacy whether it's with some one many years our junior, someone of the same sex or anything else. We crave it. But I don't buy this she-seduced-me story that H.H. keeps telling. She's a child. She doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't have a father, she doesn't have a boyfriend and then he comes along and she combines the completely different male figures in her life into one- him. Nobody told her that a lover and a father should be completely different people in her life with different roles. Nobody told her and her childish ways work out in his favour.

Fate is a Friend of H.H.

Does fate have a special relationship with H.H? Or perhaps it allows things to go according to H.H.'s desires just to see what happens in the end? Yes, I do believe fate is tickled silly with this absurd situation that it fancies the end result. "This is hilarious. I wonder how it's going to turn out in the end." I can just imagine fate pondering such a thought. How else is it then, that Charlotte Haze finds out about Lolita and her husband then dies in a proceeding car tragedy? Charlotte Haze's death, leaving H.H. responsible to care for Lolita and abiding to the very core of his desire of being with her. Oh, I know it's just the author's plan of advancing the plot. However the way Nabokov let fate be a dear friend of H.H. so much that he always gets his way without a true struggle, makes readers question. I guess authors have to overlook such things and sacrifice a small essence of reality to situations to get to the real point: telling a story. In return, readers must also overlook such irrelevant details that prevent them from tasting the main themes of a book. An amusing thought comes to mind at this, when readers of Harry Potter complained to J.K. Rowling that in her books she never mentions the characters going to the bathroom. I found this absurd and I loved her response to it: If I had, would that have changed the entire course of the story? This is also seen in Lord of the Flies where readers wrote to Golding and said that's impossible for Piggy's glasses to make fire. Ignore the things that don't matter, people. Just read the story. Sometimes I have to tell myself this too.

Permanent Sleep

If we think about permanent sleep, do we automatically have images of "Sleeping Beauty" whisk in our minds? Do we think that permanent sleep means death? Well, we shouldn't. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the figurative, metaphorical world. One can sleep without actually sleeping. I mean sleep in that you're oblivious to your surroundings, you drown in your own ignorance and unawareness and NOTHING can wake you up. So, you might as well be actually sleeping. These constant pajama wearers as I like to call it, I encounter all the time: in movies, song lyrics, books, and of course real life. Charlotte Haze is one of them. In some ways I don't blame her. How could you possibly know that your husband is secretly in love and participating in brow-frowning activities with your own daughter? Yet, how could you not know? When he glances at you at night before you go to sleep, does he glance lovingly? Does he speak genuine words of admiration to you? Or is Charlotte so caught up with her love of H.H that she wants to believe that he loves her back so badly, that she does, especially when he says it. Why question it? Why bother analyzing those little unusual clues about my husband and daughter? Well if she had, she would surely disapprove and get further furious at the thoughts and images that pass through her lover's mind. H.H. does have some ideas where he plans on giving his wife and Lolita sleeping pills to knock them out for a good, solid few hours. In that period of their sleep, he would rape Lolita (while she's sleeping) and his wife won't find out because she's sleeping too. Well, Charlotte is always sleeping, so what difference does it make?

OH THE CRUELTY!!

It's so cruel and wicked of H.H. to lead poor Charlotte into a false world where her new husband actually loves her back. The poor widow is so giddy and overwhelmed to have found love after her husband died, at her age, with an impossible daughter, Lolita. She buys home magazines and decorates their house and she wonders about in bliss. Too bad she doesn't have any knowledge that it's ALL a LIE! It bugs me sometimes when a book contains dramatic irony- when the reader knows something of value that a character in the book doesn't. I wonder how Charlotte would react when she finds out that her husband is actually attracted to her 12-year old daughter. In the book, H.H. comments on his disgust or indifference when making love to his wife. He prefers his lovely Lolita. In all this silent commotion, Charlotte doesn't share the same affection for her daughter as H.H. In fact, she doesn't have any sort of fondness of her. Charlotte had planned to send Lola away to a boarding school, then off to college. We can all imagine H.H.'s disappointment in this. He's so disappointed he thinks about getting Charlotte out of the picture, getting rid of her permanently. Yes, that means murder. H.H. does think about murdering his wife. Once again, fate seems to be on his side as it presented him with a perfect opportunity. A quiet beach where they swim together like children splashing around, he devises the absolute, flawless plan for his capital crime. No one would know. She drowned. I did all I could. Thankfully, H.H. is not the biggest sinner.
"But what d'ye konw, folks-I just could not make myself do it."
Thank you, Nabokov, you've really created a realistic character now- one that doesn't sin ALL the time.

Desicion vs. Desire

Lolita goes to camp for the summer while H.H. daydreams about her. He has her nicknames for her like Lo, Lola, Lolita, Dolly, etc... Things get a bit interesting when H.H. comes upon a letter Lolita's mother wrote for him. In it, she confesses her unconditional, love-at-first-sight devotion for him. She carries on in a lengthy letter that he must leave at once because she knows he won't love her back. He must leave as she can't bear see him in her own house. (As a side note, Charlotte Haze (Lolita's mom) had offered H.H. to stay at their house for traveling purposes). WOW! for H.H. He has this kind opportunity thrown at him. Yet only a cruel mind, or a madly in love one, would even think about it. He does think about it. What is it? The scheming plan is to marry Lolita's mom, as a way of getting closer to Lolita. I wonder, when one is in love, does all sanity and values dissolve into another universe? Does morality and ethics slip away as we are no longer logical people? If H.H. does marry Charlotte just to get a chance to be forever near Lolita, then he is entered the realm of illogical fools. No offense to this fictional character, but H.H. is a pathetic fool. How can a well-educated bilingual man cease reasonable thinking? If he does marry her mother, then he will be having crude activities with his own step-daughter!! Somehow when Lolita wasn't in any way related to him, his love wasn't so horrible as it seems now. H.H. must now weigh his decisions with his desires.

Details, Details!

This book doesn't just explore the idea of a passionate encounter of a middle-aged man and a 7th grader, it also describes enough vivid details for the reader to conjure up unwanted imagery. This probably adds to its "forbidden" qualities. Even if a book's characters were a married, same-aged, educated couple engaging in their physical activities, it would be banned, had it gone into enormous detail. Since Lolita showcases the heated relationship of lovers with an enormous age gap, then it's double banned. Nabokov does brilliant work, in that his details aren't repulsive or disgusting, but his choice of words and the way he weaves them creates so much for the reader to imagine. Also, Lolita is written in first person (a memoir), where H.H. is writing a manuscript of some sort to present to a jury at his trial. It doesn't say yet, what he's going to trial for. This also contributes to the simplicity of this book.

Sometimes, You Can't Change

"Knowing me by now, the reader can easily imagine how dusty and hot I got, trying to catch a glimpse of nymphets (alas, always remote) playing in Central Park, and how repulsed I was by the glitter of deodorized career girls that a gay dog in one of the offices kept unloading upon me." From that quote in the book, we see that H.H. just holds a special place for a particular kind of girls. He is, and many will agree, a troubled man in the eyes of society.
A breakdown at work caused him to be hospitalized for a year in the Canadian Arctic! H.H. was among others with various problems and doctors doing hard labour in the extreme cold. While there, his problem is unknown to the other patients and doctors. He's distracted by this unfamiliar atmosphere and thus doesn't think about the things that usually occupys his mind. He dreams about the translucent sky that hovers above him and analyzes his bizarre environment of glacial drifts and drumlins. As soon as he gets fed up with this absurd project that actually took over 22 months, he returns to civilization. And therefore, he returns to himself.
Escaping his usual area of residence wasn't going to change H.H.'s abnormal behaviour. H.H. deep down knew of this fact too. He knew that his old ways and attractions weren't going to change. They were a bad habit, but more so a part of him.
Getting help from psychiatrists certainly did not help. H.H. played around with their methods, having learnt their techniques and ways of diagnosis. He made up wildly detailed, fantasized dreams and described them to the pyschiatrists, confusing them. After having looked at his files and seeing "potentially homosexual" and "totally impotent" listed under his name, H.H. was sincerely amused. He had tricked the pyschiatrists and was proud of it.
In H.H.'s case and many people around the world, change is not possible when it is so deeply rooted in them. Some kinds of change are easily accomplished at a young age when we know not of the many ways that exist and when we're the most vulnerable. There have been parents and fundamentalist religious organizations that have tried giving regular therapy and electric shock therapy to their homosexual children with the help of doctors. This has proven to be ineffective. You can't change a person's sexual orientation. You can't tell someone: "try not to be gay." That's the equivalent of saying: "try not to be born in Canada" (when they're already born). Practically nothing will work; no escaping your environment, no shock therapy. And if it does work, you'll be immensly unhappy. Therefore as we're reading "Lolita" and wondering about H.H., we have to dispose of ideas of change for him. We can't tell H.H. to try not to be attracted to nymphets.

Lolita in Pop Culture

It looks like such an image of a nymphet was needed in our society because after Nabokov wrote "Lolita", seductive young girls were nicknamed Lolita. While Lolita is a beautiful name that slides from the tongue and has a melodious tone to it, after this novel parents refrained from naming their daughters Lolita. Doing so was similar to calling your daughter a prostitute or any other vulgar description associated to such girls. Too bad, though. I really like the name Lolita. In the book, the young girl H.H. falls in love with isn't called Lolita, no, that's just a nickname for her. Her real name is Dolores Haze!
Movies have been made based on this novel: A 1962 film by Stanley Kubrick and a 1997 film by Adrain Lyne. Songs have used "Lolita" as a synonym for "a seductive young girl". The Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me" says: "It's no use, he sees her, he starts to shake and cough, just like that old man in the book by Nabokov." Alizée, a well-known French singer sang: "Moi...Lolita", a single that topped the charts in many European countries. She described herself with that Lolita image in that song.
So, why is Lolita so repetitive in our pop culture? I hadn't read the book ever and I've heard people talking about it and I heard of people mentioning "Lolita" to describe people they knew.

Understanding Behaviour

Before Lolita comes into the story, H.H. (Humbert Humbert) tells us of his previous lovers. There was his beloved Annabel during his childhood, who was only a few months his junior! So... H.H. wasn't always attracted to nymphets! Annabel and him were madly in love with each other (this is while they were kids) but she died and left H.H. helplessly wounded. Ever since, he's said that when he sees Lolita it sort of reminds him of Annabel. I wonder if H.H.'s passion for young girls is because he wants to relive his memories with his childhood sweetheart, Annabel. She died, yet he wasn't ready to let go of her, so he replaced her with Lolita in his adult life. The tragic death of a loved one at such a young age may have been the event that triggered H.H.'s nymphet way of life. Isn't always the rape victim, the abused child, the drug-addict, the orphan who continues to suffer later in their life? I mean, we hear about this a lot: Oh, that guy must have had a rough childhood, or he probably didn't have a paternal figure in his life. Perhaps if H.H. had gotten help or coped better after the loss of his Annabel, things would have been different. It also doesn't help that his wife, Valerie, in his later years cheats on him and leaves yet another emotional wound on him. This guy's soul probably looks like he's been in a emotional car accident! H.H.'s past lovers have impacted him, for sure, but the degree of their impact may be the cause of his current, "wierd" condition. Perhaps.

Lolita, the bold book

A burst of exhilaration rushes through my mind as I'm reading. Wow, what an audacious story. It's not the common love story we hear about. No it's not Jack and Rose from Titantic or the troubled princess and the heroic prince from fairy tales. It's something we frown upon and shake our heads at if we come across it.The crazy obsession of this man, H.H and his passion for a young girl is unusual to us because it's far from our take on what is right. It is the behaviour that we were exposed to as what is wrong. I personally find it refreshing and this may be odd to say, but I'll say it anways since I'm in a daring mood.

I haven't gotten to the heart of the novel yet and I wonder: Is it love or lust? It's unclear so far whether H.H.'s intentions are pure out of devotion and admiration or simply aggressive desires? Yes, but still I've turned enough pages to understand why this thought-provoking literary work could cause people to ban it. Why would anyone want to ban this? It's because it goes against the perfected love image our society has painted. If it doesn't in anyway resemble the painting that society has created, then we don't want to see it, hear about it, or read it! It has stirred a gigantic pot of controversy. Controversy reeks havoc, but we should seek it as it calls for an evaluation on our entire morals and beliefs. It makes open-minded people and takes a step closer to living in a liberated world. Let's redefine our ideas of right and wrong.