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.