The Love Story In Vladimir Nobakov's Lolita

Vladimir Nobakov’s novel, Lolita, is the narration of pedophilic murderer Humbert, and his documentation of his “love story” with prepubescent Dolores. Writing from prison, Humbert frames this entire story to describe events from his point of view. Often, criminal offenders will give reason for why they act the way they do in order to appease society to dismiss their actions. Humbert is a prime example of this. Because the novel is written strictly in his point of view, this gives him power to relay the course of events to the readers in any way he chooses, adding or detracting details to make his “case.” There are many instances in the novel in which Humbert not only seduces young Dolores, but also seduces the reader as well to believing that

He directly addresses the readers in a way that frames the book to be a pseudo-court case. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied” (9). This is a rhetorical strategy that shows that his intentions are not just to profess his love for Lolita to readers, but for readers to accept that his love for her was just and moral. He wants to feed readers his version of events to mask the true nature of them. Humbert’s narration famously begins as “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” (9). He goes on to describe how Lolita is his special name for her, that “in [his] arms she was always Lolita” and not just her given name, Dolores (9). Right away Humbert sets to portray his feelings for her as intensely emotional. Even the action of saying her name is a passionate experience for him, trying to make readers believe that his attraction for her is not as much physical as it is emotional. However, readers can see that he is attracted to her because she is the most perfect form of what he famously coins as a “nymphet.” He discusses at length how her prepubescent shape is what he lusts over, and in

What is interesting to note is that Humbert is asserting himself to be a murderer. Why confess this, especially when most of the novel is Humbert telling people of his relationship with a young girl? Maybe he feels that he needs to admit the truth right away, and will use his prose to explain and detract the reader from the true atrocity. People will often start by telling others something that is ugly in nature, then go on to explain so that it does not appear to be that bad; Humbert could be doing the same thing here. By telling us that he is a murderer, and framing the story of his relationship with Dolores as something that is not bad, it could also be him trying to explain the murder as something that is similar to his relationship with Dolores: simultaneously telling readers the truth of his actions and deceiving them into thinking that it is not malicious. Nonetheless, his fancy prose frames his rhetoric. He uses great detail to detract readers from the actions that he commits. “I seemed to have shed my clothes and slipped into pajamas with the kind of fantastic instantaneousness which is implied when in a cinematographic scene the process of changing is cut” (128). Here he describes himself stripping out of clothes when he is about to fondle Lolita, but he uses the art of cinematography to describe this in a round about way. He uses great imagery that is supposed to