Lolita And Pale Fire: A Literary Analysis

The home is a place of familiarity and solace, an Eden, for all who are lucky enough to have a home. For those who are unlucky and live, willingly or not, without a home—jumping from place to place, in a sort of unending exile—there is no paradise like this in their lives. Vladimir Nabokov writes about those who have been exiled in his novels Lolita and Pale Fire. In Lolita Humbert Humbert is a European living in America with no permanent home and Lolita is a girl ripped away from her home by her stepfather. In Pale Fire Charles Kinbote is a former king trying to find refuge from his war-torn country. Vladimir Nabokov allows his readers an insight into lives of exile and the effects of exile on people in these two works. He illustrates that

These unhealthy attachments can be seen through Lolita’s attachment to Humbert, Kinbote’s attachment to the poem, and Humbert’s attachment to exile. On the long road of exile Lolita ends up growing an unhealthy attachment to Humbert despite his awful actions to her; “She[Lolita] asked me[Humbert] not to be dense… I had been a good father, she guessed—granting me that.” (Lolita 272). Humbert spends nearly the entirety of the book doing awful things to Lolita including kidnapping her and raping her more than once. Despite all of this, all the horrible things Humbert did, Lolita seems to forgive him at the end explaining how he had been a good father. This is entirely untrue, he had been an awful father. As literary critic Brian Walter points out, “Lolita now married and heavily pregnant, but lacking even a trace of the resentment, in fact the hatred, her step-father clearly deserves from her.” (Walter 14). Lolita should despise her father for all the horrible things he has done but instead she seems to still love him as a father and appreciate what he did for her. This attachment to him is so strange that it seems impossible that anyone would act like her in her situation. However, her experience with exile can explain this attachment to Humbert. After being torn away from her home and forced into a trip across America, Humbert is the only one with her the whole time. Whether he is awful or not, he is the only familiar thing on the road. She becomes attached to him because he is her stepfather and the only familiar thing throughout the trip. Kinbote also shows an unhealthy attachment to the poem as a cause of his exile; “I lived in constant fear that robbers would deprive me of my tender treasure [the poem].” (Pale Fire 299). Kinbote is so attached to this poem written by his dead poet friend that he has an irrational fear of it