Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita, a tale of a man and his superficial love for an adolescent girl. Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1899 but died on July 2, 1977 in Switzerland after writing a surplus of various novels, one of them being Lolita. He studied at Trinity College in Cambridge then moved to the United States where he received great recognition for his work as a novelist. Nabokov wrote Lolita because he thought it was an interesting thing to do and he liked to create riddles with “elegant solutions.” Nabokov’s tale was originally written in Russian as a prototype with few changes to the course of Lolita.
The story of Lolita was written in the United States during the 1950’s. Authors in the fifties were considered the Beat Generation and the movements were sexual liberation and disregard for traditional values in writing. Narratives seemed more liberated and open like Lolita because it is far from conservative and
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traditional literature. Humbert begins in 1947 when he travels from Paris to New York and into the Haze home being welcomed by Mrs. Charlotte Haze. After Charlotte’s car accident, Humbert heads to the camp to pick up Dolores and travels noisy hotel to noisy hotel all around the United States. “I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you’ve done to me.” said Lolita. This quote is important because Humbert took advantage of her and took away her innocence all for his fetish for young girls. Humbert did the opposite of love her like he claims and he abused Lolita. This quote is significant to my understanding of the novel because it shows that their relationship wasn’t made of love and he changed her from just a little girl into a child prematurely handling adult situations. “Because you cheated me of my redemption, because you took her at the age when lads play with erector sets…” said Humbert Humbert. Before H.H murdered Quilty he accused him of stealing Lolita when she was in her prime, an innocent nymphet. Humbert claims he was Lolita’s father but didn’t love her like a father should. As loving father you should be more concerned about a man taking advantage of your Lolita but instead Humbert was jealous and upset that her innocence was stolen by another man. Quilty is just as bad as Humbert but he killed him for being his equal and “brother.” In Humbert’s mind he did all the hard work like removing Lolita from under her mother’s arms only to be lead into Quilty’s hands. The theme of Lolita is love or lust but never both. As the story of Lolita is told in Humbert’s point of view, he believes he truly loves Lolita but his actions show otherwise. The first line of Lolita reads “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” H.H always sexualized Lolita and made decisions based on what kept their relationship going instead of what is best for the child. Love makes you do caring things for a person but what Humbert had was simply lust and out of place sexual desires because of his dangerous obsession with young girls, nymphets. Humbert Humbert was born in Paris, France on 1910. After his parents died he was raised by his aunt Sybil. Annabel was his first love and attempts at a sexual affair, the spark to his flame. Shortly after their relationship ended Annabel died of typhoid fever which left him heartbroken. Humbert began studies in Paris and pursued a career of teaching English literature. As Humbert grew up he played his hand in Parisian prostitutes, often Monique but got rid of her when she began to age into an older woman. To dupe his love for nymphets at the start he married Valeria Zborovsky whom he treated poorly and even contemplated murdering. Valeria cheated on Humbert which ended their marriage. H.H spent time in psychiatric clinics, battling insanity. Humbert arrives in Ramsdale, New England and is welcomed into Charlotte Haze’s home along with her child, Dolores Haze.
Love at first sight, so it seemed for Humbert when he laid his eyes on little Haze, Lolita only age 12. Humbert lives the fiasco of lusting for Lolita and keeping it all a secret while beginning a relationship with Mama Haze. Lolita was quite the handful which is why her mother sent her off to summer camp and while driving her there she left Humbert a love letter requesting he marry her or just leave and save herself the embarrassment. They have a brief marriage trying to learn more about each other. Humbert comes up with a plan of drugging the women and wishes there’d just be a natural occurrence in which Mama Haze would just disappear and Lolita would be all his. He even attempted to kill her but he just couldn’t do anything to hurt her like he could with Valeria. Lucky enough for H.H., Charlotte found his diary about the whole ordeal angrily storms out to the mailbox. She died in a car
accident. Humbert picks Lolita up from Camp Q and spends his first night with her in a motel. After Lolita learns about her mother they spend a year traveling hotel to hotel while he seduces her. He secures her secrecy by feeding her lies about how life with him will be better than an orphanage. Humbert becomes paranoid when he notices an odd man following them around everywhere they went. They settle in a town and enroll Lolita in Beardsley College. As time goes on Lolita grows older and begins to pull away from Humbert, he tightens his rules especially no boy involvement. Lolita became ill and is taken to the hospital but while Humbert is away she was gone off with another man. He had lost Lolita for two years which he followed them with little jokes and hints at every hotel but never got close. Lolita finally regained contact with him again through a letter indicating her pregnancy, new marriage, and hopes for money. Humbert believe the man she married was her kidnapper and planned to kill him for all stealing Lolita from him. He searches for a now pregnant and seventeen year old, Lolita but realizes it isn’t the same man and immediately requests she tell him who it is. It was Clare Quilty, all along. Lolita confessed he was the only man she ever loved. Quilty had eyed her since she was young but got rid of her when she didn’t want to be a part of his pornography. Humbert killed Clare Quilty at Pavor Manor and was arrested. John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. wrote the foreword of Humbert Humbert’s manuscript being that he was in jail when he wrote the story and later died of coronary thrombosis before trial. Mrs. Richard Schiller died of childbirth on Christmas day. Nabokov uses literary devices like imagery, symbolism, irony, and flashback to get his point across. Imagery is used in the text to show the reader what Humbert looks for in nymphets, his obsession. For example, “…the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb” or “pale pubescent girls with matted eyelashes.” The Enchanted Hunters is where Lolita and Humbert first have sex and the same title of Quilty’s play at Beardsley School which Humbert doesn’t even recognize. The hotel symbolizes their relationship, H.H. being the predator chasing after an enchanted “nymphet’s spell” as Humbert calls it in part one, chapter five. When Lolita tells Humbert that Clare was her kidnapper he has a flashback of the first time he heard that name. “Waterproof. Why did a flash from Hourglass Lake cross my consciousness? I had too known it, without knowing it, all along.” As a reader this flashback makes you realize the significance of the moment and makes one think why didn’t I realize sooner? The flashback merges all past events with the reality that Quilty was the kidnapper after all. Humbert kills Clare Quilty for taking away Lolita’s innocence which is major irony because he later admits he did the same. Clare was H.H.’s equal and they both were just as bad. In a way the reference to a nymphet’s spell is foreshadowing that Lolita’s presence is so vivid that it drives one wild as if Humbert was under her enchanted spell. In Conclusion, these literary devices are proven to be methods that efficiently, tell Nabokov’s story.
The idea of enlightenment and the feeling of liberation seem unattainable most of the time. However, once you discover a gateway, such as literature or meditation, it becomes easier to reach your goals of becoming open-minded. Azar Nafisi’s “Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran” describes the struggles she and her students face and how they use literature to escape from their atrocious life. Similarly, “Wisdom” by Robert Thurman explores the idea of reaching a nirvana-like state where people become aware of their surroundings and the nature of themselves. Nafisi and Thurman state that once people have attained the knowledge to reach an utopian, nirvana like state and have unmasked themselves from a pseudo-self mask put on for society, they must share their knowledge with others. Both Nafisi and Thurman propose that in order to act out selflessly and become an honest, true self, an individual needs bravery and courage to escape from their comfort zone and reach a state of compassion.
The novel, Passing by Nella Larsen, tells a story of two African- American women’s who work hard for the American dream. Larson demonstrates certain conflicts such as betrayal, jealousy, lies, race, and sexuality. Clare Kendry and Irene Reinfield were childhood friends, but when Clare’s father died, she moved away with her aunts and Irene never saw her again. Both Clare and Irene are light skinned who may pass as white. Irene stays with her race while Clare abandons her race by passing as white. Irene works hard for her American dream and as a black woman it is very difficult to become a successful middle class worker during the 1920s. As Irene struggles for her American dream, Clare, finds the easy route by passing as white and marrying
Dostoevsky first presents Smerdyakov, in The Brothers Karamazov, in Book 3 of Part 1. The author divulges details of the conception of the fourth son of Fyodor Pavovich Karamazov. Late on a September evening, a drunk Fyodor, by modern standards, "rapes" a homeless woman. Stinking Lizaveta, the victim of Fyodor's violence, was a legend in the town. Regardless of her unattractive and dirty appearance, her poverty, and homelessness, the townspeople regarded her with sympathy and compassion. Fyodor, on the other hand, treated Lizaveta as an insubordinate who was undeserving of even an ounce of respect. He and his friends mock her. He, then, rapes her. And, as if these actions are not cruel and offensive enough, he vehemently denies any of it happening. Later, when Lizaveta gives birth to Fyodor's illegitimate son, it is Grigory and Marfa who take the boy in, baptize him, and decide to raise the child. The townspeople mistakenly credit Fyodor for taking the dead woman's child into his house. All of these disturbing actions on the part of Fyodor are cause for his punishment.
Collins, Emily. “Nabokov’s Lolita and Anderson’s The Little Mermaid.” Nabokov Studies 9 (2005): 77-100. 10 Oct. 2006. http://muse.jhu.edu.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/journals/nabokov_studies/toc/nab9.1.html
Vladimir Nabokov suffered a neurological disorder called Synthesia. In this disorder, some senses appear the form of other senses. For his specific case, it allowed him to see letters in color. The literary form of this disorder is writing when one sense describes another. Nabokov’s synthesia allowed for him to compose its’ literary form in a superior manner. Additionally, in its literary implication, synthesia generates juxtapositions of the senses. With and in juxtaposition, he uses the comparison of senses to describe one sense through another sense. Nabokov uses his Synthesia to enhance juxtapositions in order to capture essence of life through words. In his short story First Love, he illustrates importance of using the senses in descriptions
According to literary theories and the theories of Fredrich Nietzsche, human beings have an unquenchable urge for power and will use "ethics," and everything else, in order to increase their authority. In Nabokov's Lolita, we see how Humbert controls Lolita in the beginning stages of their relationship but eventually finds himself going mad because of her deceitful ways and the control she has over his sexual desires.
Rich in its complexity, Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift deviates from standard literature in its lack of a standard narrative form. The Gift is structured in five chapters that vary significantly in tone, voice, pacing and narrative purpose; although Fyodor can be considered the main protagonist, the stylistic changes, shifting perspectives and "presentation of time" (Dolinin 7) within each chapter suggests that Fyodor 's voice cannot reliably be considered as the voice of the narrator. This is further complicated by Fyodor 's decision to write a novel at the end of Chapter 5, which will presumably be The Gift; by creating a scenario where the main protagonist declares his next work will be the one which is currently being read, the suggestion is that Fyodor is simply a thinly veiled representation of the author. However, the true narrator of The Gift is not the voice of Fyodor nor Nabokov, but the voice of the created work itself: The Gift, as a text and created work of art, is its own narrator.
I believe viewers are more likely to communicate upon the works of the Guerrilla Girls with one another in society when they take on a more comedic approach. This investigation has examined the Guerrilla Girls through direct connection to the inequalities of power over women in the art world. Several themes were highlighted within society that reinstated these cultural norms of gender and sex within the institutions of art. With a variety of forms used by the Guerrilla Girls to redefine women's identity in history, they were able to break down such barriers that stood in the way which denied the prosperity of female artists.
In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the overruling drive of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is his want to attest himself master of all, whether man or woman, his prime cravings, all-powerful destiny, or even something as broad as language. Through the novel the reader begins to see Humbert’s most extreme engagements and feelings, from his marriage to his imprisonment, not as a consequence of his sensual, raw desires but rather his mental want to triumph, to own, and to control. To Humbert, human interaction becomes, or is, very unassuming for him: his reality is that females are to be possessed, and men ought to contest for the ownership of them. They, the women, become the very definition of superiority and dominance. But it isn’t so barbaric of Humbert, for he designates
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment begins with Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov living in poverty and isolation in St. Petersburg. The reader soon learns that he was, until somewhat recently, a successful student at the local university. His character at that point was not uncommon. However, the environment of the grim and individualistic city eventually encourages Raskolnikov’s undeveloped detachment and sense of superiority to its current state of desperation. This state is worsening when Raskolnikov visits an old pawnbroker to sell a watch. During the visit, the reader slowly realizes that Raskolnikov plans to murder the woman with his superiority as a justification. After the Raskolnikov commits the murder, the novel deeply explores his psychology, yet it also touches on countless other topics including nihilism, the idea of a “superman,” and the value of human life. In this way, the greatness of Crime and Punishment comes not just from its examination of the main topic of the psychology of isolation and murder, but the variety topics which naturally arise in the discussion.
Anton Chekhov born into a life of serfdom in late 19th century Russia. Although Chekhov and his family struggled financially for most of his life, he acquired a great education. Chekhov is known for writing many emotionally attached stories, but his writing of Lady with Lapdog was close to his heart because Chekhov shared a similar experience to the main character of Gurov along his own love and happiness.
With his 1955 novel Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov invents a narrator by the name of Humbert Humbert who is both an exquisite wordsmith and an obsessive pedophile. The novel serves as the canvas upon which Humbert Humbert will paint a story of love, lust, and death for the reader. His confession is beautiful and worthy of artistic appreciation, so the fact that it centers on the subject of pedophilia leaves the reader conflicted by the close of the novel. Humbert Humbert frequently identifies himself as an artist and with his confession he hopes “to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets” (Nabokov, Lolita 134). Immortalizing the fleeting beauty and enchanting qualities of these preteen girls is Humbert Humbert’s artistic mission
In his novel Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky uses Raskolnikov as a vessel for several different philosophies that were particularly prominent at the time in order to obliquely express his opinions concerning those schools of thought. Raskolnikov begins his journey in Crime and Punishment with a nihilistic worldview and eventually transitions to a more optimistic one strongly resembling Christian existentialism, the philosophy Dostoevsky preferred, although it could be argued that it is not a complete conversion. Nonetheless, by the end of his journey Raskolnikov has undergone a fundamental shift in character. This transformation is due in large part to the influence other characters have on him, particularly Sonia. Raskolnikov’s relationship with Sonia plays a significant role in furthering his character development and shaping the philosophical themes of the novel.
Passing, by Nella Larsen is a book of racial identification focused on the reunion of two childhood friends, Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. Clare and Irene’s relationship reflects jealousy and envy throughout the story. This novel tells a story of two African American woman who are very similar, yet different with their experiences of “passing” as white. In passing, Clare and Irene create a unique feeling of identity and belonging. Irene has the ability to suppress her feelings as well as a strong moral connection with her roots, and Clare decides to live her life as a “white” and lacks self-awareness.
The Harlem Renaissance was a 1920’s cultural movement that allowed African Americans growth after years of discrimination hindered them culturally. There are many well renowned writers associated with the movement, however although unrecognized Nella Larsen was a very relevant and important contribution with her novels Passing and Quicksand. Her novel Passing in particular, focuses on the lives of Irene and Brian Redfield and John Bellow and how their lives are affected by Clare-Kendra Below. The title “Passing,” is significant itself because it is according to Ohio State Law Journal, “a deception that enables a person to adopt certain roles or identities from which he would be barred by prevailing