Similarities Between Lolita And The Great Gatsby

Though relationships might seem ordinary on the outside, when taken a closer look at, they may have underlying issues. It is similar to when a book is narrating the story of a relationship, and until it reveals the problems concerning it. In Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator Humbert Humbert is a high-middle class man who starts the book by declaring his love to a character named Lolita. It is soon acknowledged that Lolita is in fact a 12-year-old child who is being sexually abused by Humbert. A similar story makes up the plot of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both books present a false image of what a healthy relationship should be [recognized as]. Jay Gatsby and Humbert Humbert have idealized an encounter from their youth

Humbert, who has been scared by the death of his childhood lover Annabel Leigh, when they met they were “madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, [I should add], because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by other’s soul and flesh; but there were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do” (Lolita p.12). Humbert had imagined and dreamt of his encounter with his first love Annabel for the entirety of his summer, but when Annabel unexpectedly died of a disease, he was left confused and helpless. His traumatic experience haunts him throughout the novel and leads him to search and be attracted girls with similar characteristics to his first first love. He initially finds clear similarities in Dolores Haze who “was the same child—the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair” same as what Annabel once had (Lolita p.39). Humbert also admits “there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea” (Lolita p.9) which clearly states the reasoning behind his particular obsession with Lolita. Jay Gatsby shows similar tendencies as well. Every single day, until he takes his last breath, Gatsby hopes for Daisy to leave her new life and return to him. He initially meets Daisy in Louisville in 1917; at the time he was penniless and about to leave for war. After realizing, Daisy would reject him if she knew of his poverty, Gatsby “ let her believe that he was a person much from the same stratum as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her” (TGG p.159) and therefore lies to her about his past and his circumstances. Over a short while Gatsby and Daisy got close to each other,