Comparative Analysis of the Literary work, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and the Artistic Works of Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, Better Known as Balthus
Lolita is written as a memoir in the first person by its main character, Humbert Humbert. This is a story that could be viewed in two very different ways, two very different perspectives. One could look at it as a story of a middle age pedophile as evidenced by the quote “Humbert Humbert is without question an honest-to-God, open-and-shut sexual deviant, displaying classic ruthlessness, guile and above all attention to detail.” And the other, of a middle aged man in anguish over his love for a prepubescent girl, a forbidden love. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. “
I chose to view this work as the later. To me it showed a middle aged man trapped in a moral dilemma. A statement from the first page of the book best says how I feel about the story. “Lolita is not about sex, but about love. Almost every page sets forth some explicit, erotic emotion or some erotic action and still it is not about sex. It is love”.
Nabokov started writing Lolita in 1949 and finished in 1954. When he finished his work he had a hard time getting it published. Publishers were nervous about printing a book supposedly narrated by a pedophile. Four American publishers turned him down before he was finally able to get it published by Olympia Press of Paris and in 1958 in America.
Controversy over the book only increased its readership and sales rose. To understand this controversy you need to understand the story and further understand why I considered it to be more of a tragic love interest rather than the perceived pornographic pedophile story thought of by others.
The story starts out with a boyhood Humbert having his first taste of a love affair with the love of his young life, Annabel.
They started a petition on Change.org, and created a campaign on one star reviews on Amazon in attempts to prevent people from purchasing the book. In the beginning Scholastic, the book’s publisher, stood beside the author and illustrator of the book giving support and telling people that the book is not as bad as it seems. The School Library Journal then issued their review and criticism of the books claiming that
While researching the book you discover that in South Carolina, the Berkley County school district, was one of the first to pull the book from schools and libraries. This occurred after a mom protested the book when her 8th grade daughter had to read little experts from the book to her classmates. The student's mother did not want her to be reading a book with so much profanity and references to sex. One of the most controversial lines that comes from the book is when Alice writes in her journal “Another day, another blow-job”. She does these blow jobs in exchange for drugs.
This controversial book has been challenged in countless states for many years. In 1997 the Elgin, Illinois school district banned the book from middle school libraries. Catherine explained that the book was banned because “talk of masturbation, birth control, and disobedience to parents occurred”
...as created controversy where his books are studied and dissected by academics. He is outspoken and interacts with critics about the themes in his book, which are the antithesis of C.S Lewis Narnia series. Controversy and debate are forms of creating interest in a book that send sales soaring. Everyone wants to read the book that is creating such a furore.
The authors do eventually (pg. 205) acknowledge that some may see the book as trying to enrage the public just to sell books. In fact, Ron Levy, P...
After hearing a brief description of the story you might think that there aren’t many good things about they story. However, this is false, there are many good things in this book that makes it a good read. First being that it is a very intriguing book. This is good for teenage readers because often times they don’t willingly want to read, and this story will force the teenage or any reader to continue the book and continue reading the series. Secondly, this is a “good” book because it has a good balance of violence. This is a good thing because it provides readers with an exciting read. We hear and even see violence in our everyday life and I believe that it is something teenagers should be exposed to. This book gives children an insig...
Since it was written during a time of politically charged climate, people easily could have mistook this for a political commentary that it was not. People may have expected Boyle, an award-winning author, to be able to create a solution for the issues he was so apparently familiar with. On the other hand, another reason there may be backlash is because of Boyle’s nationality as an American. People may be skeptical that a man from New York should be writing on the issue in the first place, and are furthered frustrated when he does not provide a proper solution either. A final reason that there is backlash could stem from raw human emotion. An emotion provoking novel, The Tortilla Curtain could have angered readers as they find no happy ending for the serious problems created. Readers may have felt that the story provided in the novel was left unfinished. This is also the case with many issues today, a constant battle left unresolved. This is why although one can understand where backlash might be coming from, the expectation for Boyle to provide a solution in his book for a much greater issue is
well as claiming that it was "explicitly pornographic" and "immoral." After months of controversy, the board ruled that the novel could be read
The novel has no plot to mention. ... The book is highly sensational, loud, blatant, ugly, pointless. There seems to be no reason for its existence Harvey Eagleton (Dallas Morning News, May 10, 1925).
Both of the characters obsessions started in their early years of their lives. Young Humbert met Annabel when he was only thirteen, “[they] were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly,…, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by other’s soul and flesh; but there [they] were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do” (Nabokov 12). When Annabel and Humbert finally had the opportunity to “show” their love to each other, they were encountered by two bather...
Although they are intimately involved, the title character of Nabokov's Lolita never fully reveals her true self to Humbert. Likewise, Humbert pours his physical love into Lolita, but he never reveals to his stepdaughter a self that is separate from his obsession with her. These two characters mask large parts of their personalities from each other and the rest of the world, creating different images and personas in regard to different people and situations. One assumption of post-structuralism holds that “persons are culturally and discursively structured, created in interaction as situated, symbolic beings.” In accordance with this idea that people are created by their culture and in their interactions, both Lolita and Humbert have different personalities in different situations and circumstances. However, they ultimately show a more continuous and profound self-existence than just as faces created in their various interactions.
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 his sexuality as of exceptionally polished taste, a penchant loftier than the typical man’s. His relationship with Valerie and Charlotte; his infatuation with Lolita; and his murdering of Quilty are all definite examples of his yearning for power. It is so that throughout the novel, and especially by its conclusion, the reader sees that Humbert’s desire for superiority subjugates the odd particularities of his wants and is the actual reason of his anguish.
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...
His first redeeming attribute is his real and true love for Lolita. Humbert infact confesses that, “I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight and ever sight”(270). If the reader thinks back to the beginning of the novel Humbert refers to Lolita as someone who only brought him lust. Humbert also makes it a point to tell the audience that he only like girls who fall into his nymphetic criteria and anyone who is too old does not appeal to him. When Humbert sees Lolita though after three years of being apart he says that “I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine”(278). No matter how she has age and move past her nymphetic stage of life Humbert still loves her. Humbert even goes on to say that, “No matter, even if those eyes of hers world fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn-even then I world go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita”(278). This is true love that he is feeling. No matter what happens to her he will still love her. Humbert has
When the book was first published, readers of the time saw it as extremely scandalous. Despite the fact that the novel doesn't not demonstrate any sex or bloodshed its depiction of the passionate love story of Cathy and Heathcliff was considered highly inappropriate, and was ignored for some time.