Lolita, was first written in English by Russian-native author Vladimir Nabokov, and was published in Paris in 1955 as well as New York in 1958 (Connolly 31). The novel has since then been most notable for its highly controversial subject matter and was thus banned upon release in many countries. The story revolves around the protagonist who is a 37 year old literature professor named Humbert Humbert who becomes deeply obsessed with a 12 year old girl named Dolores Haze; whom he calls Lolita, with whom he becomes sexually involved with after he marries her mother and becomes her stepfather (Connolly 31). Since the release of the novel, the word ‘Lolita’ has entered pop culture and is now used to describe a sexually precocious girl. Because of the ban that was placed on this novel, Lolita has gotten much attention around the world and is known to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, however, Lolita was not perfect in every sense (Connolly 31). It is said that this novel contains perhaps the greatest example of an unreliable narrator and that being in the form of Humbert Humbert. His failure to chronology examine events and leave out details proves that Humbert Humbert is one of the most unreliable narrators of all time, and after reading this essay, one will able to understand why and to what extent it is so.
The stylistic devices that are used, were used so convincingly that it made the readers question Nabokov’s own character believing that he too shared Humberts predilection for “nymphets”. This caused Nabokov to write an afterword to put to bed the misconceptions that his readers would might have had. Humbert toys around many time with the reader, first by claiming that he took advantage of the relationships he had ...
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...king them divert their attention to the use of his fancy prose. Throughout the novel his stylistic mask does show up to cover some of the more unsettling parts of his memoir.
In one scene of the novel, Lolita lays her legs across Humberts lap and from this he becomes aroused. Humbert then gets the reader so engaged in his artistic and complex prose that they tend to instead read the scene with a much less harsh tone. Humbert not only uses prose to divert the readers attention away, but he even sets the scene up for his reader as if it were a play and this was all apart of an act.
In conclusion, we can easily come to the realization that Humbert is not a reliable narrator in Lolita and with the artistic prose and his self proclamation of being a trickster he understand that he uses mask to hide the truth about himself and how many situations played out in the novel.
Vogel’s writing exudes symbolism from the first word of the script to the last – from the rise of the curtain to its close. The glimpses into Li’l Bit’s past are sometimes explicitly and literally described, but Vogel also often uses extended metaphors to act as a detailed commentary on the action. Why, however, did the playwright choose symbolism to convey the effects of sexual abuse – as heavy as its subject matter may be – during the late twentieth century when seemingly nothing is censored in America? In order to answer this and better understand the way in which Vogel uses symbolism –in the smaller elements of the play and extended metaphors – the terms must first be defined.
In “Nevsky Prospect,” the third person narrator pulls double duty by describing two stories that parallel each other in time. After describing the seemingly harmless bustling avenue, mustaches, and clothing of Nevsky Prospect, the narrator happens to come upon two different characters: an artist and an officer. First, he follows the artist and right away, the narrator seems to be absorbed in the world of the artist. We see this occur when it is often hard to tell when the artist is dreaming or awake. The narrator does not initially make it clear when the artist is dreaming, which can be disorienting for the reader.
In Aldous Huxley’s novel, “Brave New World,” published in 1932, two idiosyncratic, female characters, Lenina and Linda, are revealed. Both personalities, presented in a Freudian relationship (Linda being John’s mother and Lenina being his soon to be lover), depict one another in different stages of life and divulge ‘a character foil’. Lenina and Linda are both ‘Betas,’ who hold a strong relationship with the men in their lives, especially John. It can be stated that John may partially feel attracted towards Lenina, because she is a miniature version of Linda, in her youth. They both support the term of ‘conditioning,’ yet also question it in their own circumstances. Nonetheless, they both are still sexually overactive and criticized for such immoral decisions. Linda espouses it from her heart, while Lenina supports the process partially due to peer pressure and society’s expectations. Both female characters visit the Reservation with Alpha – Plus males, and both find a common feeling of revulsion towards it. Linda and Lenina are similar in many ways, yet they hold their diverse views on the different aspects of life.
She is able to do this by presenting parts of her testimony as poems while also switching up the point of view that the story is being told in. In addition, Delbo often breaks down the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader, a technique that is very effective in evoking an emotional response. Delbo’s poetic approach and varying sentence structure allows her to create the “aesthetics of agitation” which makes some of the story easier to understand and digest by using style and structure to convey important but also disturbing details (XVI). When the events of her account become chaotic she uses short sentence fragments to convey the feeling of confusion. Whenever she was describing role-call she would use long and descriptive sentences to make it seem as though the process is going on for a long time like during the roll call in which her friend allows her to cry (105). The varying sentence length helps to enhance Delbo’s testimony and make her experiences that much more
The novel introduces HumbertHumbert, a man with charm and the dignity of being a teacher in Paris. Yet, we instantly find he is a sexually disturbed man, lusting for young, prepubescent girls. His perversions are obvious--we can tell from his journal--and the ideas are highly obsessive with the topic of young girls. His mind is always on his first true love, his young Annabel, who died a short time after his first sexual encounter with her. Humbert says, "I see Annabel in such general terms as: 'honey-colored skin,' 'thin arms,' 'brown bobbed hair,' 'long lashes,' 'big bright mouth' (11). This, in fact, becomes his outline for a nymphet, or a girl between the ages of 9 and 14. One who meets his strict criteria is to become a gem in his eyes, yet treated with the same objectivity as a whore. He considers them all sexual objects for his enjoyment because he is a man who wishes to dominate these girls at such a young age.
In his "On a Book Entitled Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov recalls that he felt the "first little throb of Lolita" run through him as he read a newspaper article about an ape who, "after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage." The image of a confinement so complete that it dominates and shapes artistic expression (however limited that expression may be) is a moving and powerful one, and it does, indeed, reflect in the text of Lolita. Humbert Humbert, the novel's eloquent poet-narrator, observes the world through the bars of his obsession, his "nympholepsy", and this confinement deeply affects the quality of his narration. In particular, his powerful sexual desires prevent him from understanding Lolita in any significant way, so that throughout the text what he describes is not the real Lolita, but an abstract creature, without depth or substance beyond the complex set of symbols and allusions that he associates with her. When in his rare moments of exhaustion Humbert seems to lift this literary veil, he reveals for a moment the violent contrast between his intricately manipulated narration and the stark ugliness of a very different truth.
...s of Lolita and Humbert to show the isolation and loneliness they feel, and to show just how different and immoral the situation is. By stressing the dissonance between one persona to the next, he portrays a view of his characters that is sad and shocking, for the public seen is also the reader; the unaware, innocent, “moral” group. By letting us into the different faces of Lolita and Humbert, Nabokov reveals the tragedy in the novel, and allows the reader to vividly feel what is morally right and wrong with Humbert, Lolita, and ourselves.
Humbert reminds the reader of his effectiveness at both seduction and therefore dominance early in the novel: “I was, and still am, despite [my misfortunate], an exceptionally handsome man.” (25) Even after all that he has went through, as this is written in his prison cell, he still claims to be as powerful as he ever was. And with such a disposition, he boasts of his ability to dominate the opposition by seducing any female, (even though he does so sometimes with exceptional motives.) He exemplifies it by wedding ...
Humbert Humbert. A delusional, sick, middle aged man obsessed with a self created love for pre-pubescent girls he has namely dubbed nymphets. Right? Wrong, this is only the skin-deep image we are given of the main character in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Rather, He is a highly intelligent chess master who is constantly aware of his environment and is able to manipulate it with minute actions bringing him the results he desires.
Literary critic and the novel’s annotator Alfred Appel Jr. claims “what is extraordinary about Lolita is the way in which Nabokov enlists us, against our will, on Humbert’s side… Humbert has figuratively made the reader his accomplice in both statutory rape and murder” (Durantaye, Style Is Matter: the Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov 8). Nabokov employs various literary devices such as direct second reader address, metaphor, and allusions through Humbert Humbert as a means to conjure up feelings of empathy. The reader comes to find that . It is clear that Humbert Humbert uses second person address as a way to control how the reader perceives him. Through the use of this narrative mode, he aims to convince the reader that his sexual violence is artistically justifiable and that the art he creates is a remedy for mortality. I will argue is that art is not a remedy for mortality because in Humbert Humbert’s creation of Lolita, t...
What world are you living in? Over the past hundreds of years psychologists have been studying the functions of the human mind. It is a task that seems to prolong as information and new methods arrive. What makes us dream or imagine things? The fact that we have dreams and ambitions in life strives us to believe through imagining and dreaming that we will eventually get a break in life. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, is a novel that characterizes these types of situations. It implies similarity in plot and theme between Lolita and certain fairy tales. Furthermore, Nabokov implies the folk characterization in Lolita to show the paradoxical relationship of art and reality thus showing how real life people live out the lives of fictional fairy tales. It is also evident that because of the folkloristic material portrayed in Lolita, it is seen that man lives between two worlds, the imagined one and the true one. The image of Lolita had such effect on society in the way that pre pubescent children wanted to be like her, they wanted to be as pretty as her and wear those heart shaped sunglasses like her thus living in a world of fantasy. Even today's society still has, more then ever that Lolita syndrome thus causing a lot of pre pubescent kids to live in a fantasy world instead of the real one.
Nabokov presents the reader with three touching characters of the mother, father, and son. The characters of the story arouse a sense of compassion and sympathy from the reader due to the helpless situation they are in. For example, the son in the story suffers from a condition called “referential mania.” Referential mania is a case where “the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence” (1166). In other words, the son has this perception where he is in a state of paranoia where he feels as if the objects around him are evil and plotting against him. He feels as if “clouds in the staring sky transmit signs detailing information about him, coats in window stores have a distort opinion of him and misinterpret his actions….he must always be on guard every minute and module of life to decoding of the undulation of things” (1167). The son is always on this mission with the objects trying to decipher the meaning behind why these objects are...
In A Room of One's Own the narrator begins an exploration of women in literature. She attempts to answer many questions regarding women. The first being why is literature about women written by men. She also critiques the scholarship of the great men of literature.
As this novel demonstrates why childhood is a necessary factor, it can be used as an example in this era where adolescent and teenage girls push to grow up, to thrill seek in their adult lives, whilst forgetting to explore their childhood years and take value where it is needed. As this novel had not considered Lolita’s insight, it is evident that the childhood that she had not discovered was tainted by Humbert’s presence of his willingness to keep Lolita with him. “I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze / I cannot get out, said the starling.” Therefore, this novel holds a figure of great importance, Lolita, of why childhood is
Though Wilde wrote in the preface to this book that " To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim", we can still trace the shadow of the author himself in all of the three major characters.