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?
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