Lolita Loss Of Innocence Essay

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The obsession with innocence and more specifically the loss of it has been a common theme in the world’s most widely consumed literature. In a contemporary sense, we have coming of age novels like J.D Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and on the more twisted side of things, Vladmir Nabokov’s Lolita, but this phenomenon goes further than just the past few centuries. In the Life of Lazarillo De Tormez, nothing in sacred. From experiencing the most primitive depths of humanity to learning the complexities and corruptions of religion, government, and the individual, our young Lazarillo is an archetype of coming to know and what that means for the soul.
Lazarillo is born into a class that cannot afford the luxury of things such as innocence and naivety. Son of a prostitute and adopted by a conman, it is obvious early on that he was never going to have a “fat, dumb, and happy” childhood. …show more content…

One by one, each of these aspects of being were continuously changing and affecting how Lazarillo went through the world. We see his progression from a one-track mind of survival to being so well versed in how his world works that he turns a blind eye to his own wife’s infidelity14. It is important we saw how rapid and harsh his coming of age experience was or we could not have fully understand the book. Having that information, one can infer that if Lazarillo doubts his wife’s fidelity he will be expected to act violently, which he learned while watching his mother receive lashings15. If Lazarillo acts violently against his wife he knows the Constable will no longer support him, as he witnessed the cruelty and power of the church first hand by serving the priest and watching the fanaticism of those buying indulgences in his time with that master. If the constable stops supporting him, he will be hungry, and Lazarillo knows hunger well enough to avoid it at all costs. As well off as he is, all can still be traced back to those first moments where he discovered

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