Lolita as an Unreliable Narrator in Nabokov's Novel newspaper article about a monkey who, "after months of persuasion by a scientist, produced the first charcoal drawing ever made by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage." The image of a confinement so complete that it dominates and shapes artistic expression (however limited it may be) is moving and powerful, and it is indeed reflected in the text of Lolita. Humbert Humbert, the novel's eloquent poet-narrator, observes the world through the bars of his obsession, his "nympholepsy", and this confinement profoundly affects the quality of his narration. In particular, his powerful sexual desires prevent him from understanding Lolita in any meaningful way, so that throughout the text what he describes is not the real Lolita, but an abstract creature, without depth or substance beyond it. beyond the complex set of symbols and allusions that he presents to him. associates with her. When, in his rare moments of exhaustion, Humbert seems to lift this literary veil, he reveals for an instant the violent contrast between his finely manipulated narration and the crude ugliness of an entirely different truth. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In one of the most elaborate and vivid scenes in the novel, Humbert excites himself to a sexual climax while Lolita sits, unknowingly, on his lap. Rejoicing in this unexpected and unnoticed accomplishment, he asserts that “Lolita has been safely solipsized” (60). Solipsism, the epistemological theory that the self is the only thing knowable and that reality consists solely of its active perceptions and modifications, very closely reflects Humbert's relationship with Lolita. Through his language, he creates a distance between Dolores and Lolita, between the child and the “solipsized” creature on whom he can “safely” impose his sexual desire. Humbert's version is a mixture of several closely related and often contradictory personal images. Some are the product of one's own imagination, while others come from classic literary works or popular songs. He makes no effort to separate these images, but moves quickly from one to the other as the narrative demands. They come together to form a new Lolita, the one who is only Humbert's projection of the original, the one who only possesses the qualities he imposes on her and who shows no evolution beyond what he allows him. persistent and reductive, is that of the nymphet. Humbert claims that this category is not his own creation but a specific natural quality to which he has given a clever name. It is well defined, although difficult to describe with precision, and it predates its members: Between nine and fourteen years young girls appear who, to certain bewitched travelers... reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic. (i.e. demonic); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate "nymphets"... Between these age limits, are all girls nymphets? Of course not. Otherwise, we who are in the know, we solitary travelers, we nympholepts, would have gone mad long ago. (16-17) This definition meets two complementary objectives. He dehumanizes the nymphet by making her foreign (“demonic”), and he absolves the passionate admirer who is not in love, but “bewitched.” Humbert can and does use this identity to justify his sexual urges towards Lolita. Seremembering the restless hour spent wandering around the Hotel des Chasseurs Enchantés, waiting for Lolita to fall into a drugged and helpless sleep, Humbert confesses that he was gravely mistaken in assuming that Lolita was helpless and innocent: I should have understood... that the nymphean evil breathing through every pore of the fairy child I had prepared for my secret delight would make the secret impossible and the delight deadly. (124-125) Through this characterization, he attributes to Lolita not only the responsibility for their first sexual encounter, but also for the suffering he will later suffer. She can do such things because she is more than human, because she is an “immortal demon disguised as a female child” (138). The dark and sexual image of the nymphet openly conflicts with another identity adopted by Lolita: that of Annabel Leigh reincarnated. From his first meeting with Lolita, Humbert assimilates her to his lost love: I have great difficulty expressing with adequate force this flash, this thrill, this impact of passionate recognition. In the sunny moment when my gaze fell on the kneeling child... the emptiness of my soul managed to suck in every detail of her brilliant beauty, and I compared them to the features of my late wife. (53) The weight of this image is much greater than it first appears, for Annabel's identity is itself a complex and inextricably nuanced tangle of meanings. By his own admission, he “remembers his features much less distinctly today than a few years ago”. By naming her Annabel Leigh, Humbert simultaneously confines and expands her to fit Poe's mythical Annabel Lee, and many of his descriptions actually contain direct references to the poem. When he meets Lolita, he transfers to her this perfect image, an artificial image which is all that remains of his first love, an image which is now the basis of his two memories and creates them thus: My true liberation [from my obsession with Annabel ] had happened... at the moment, in fact, when Annabel Haze, aka Dolores Lee, aka Loleeta, had appeared to me, golden and brown, kneeling, looking up, on that shaded veranda... (167)Here he refers to Annabel Lee, not Annabel Leigh. Humbert cannot distinguish between the original little girl and the literary filter through which he remembers her. Likewise, the image he imposes on Lolita is crystalline, artificial, colored by visions of envious angels and a mythical kingdom. Throughout the novel, Humbert's Lolita adopts countless other disguises. When overwhelmed by the despair of his love or the dangerously unstable nature of his situation, Humbert refers to Lolita as his Carmen. The name first appears as the chorus of a popular song depicting promiscuity, a song that Humbert transforms into a frenetically stilted poem about Lolita's absence. It evolves slowly, so that at the end of the novel it refers to the gypsy heroine of Merrimée's famous novel, another sometimes cruel and elusive creature. When he sees the signs of age on Lolita's face and manner, he makes her an echo of his mother, "Charlotte [rising] from her grave" (275). She can be a “mere child” (180) one moment and a “conspirator” the next (183). When, long after she escaped from him, he visits her and her husband, the changes he sees in her make him uneasy. He only finds a moment's peace when it returns to a more familiar form, a form of his own creation, when "for a moment, strangely enough, the only merciful and bearable ones in the whole interview [they] bristled l 'against each other as if it were still [his]" (272). These contrasting images, the..

Essay / Lolita as an Unreliable Narrator in Nabokov's Novel newspaper article about a monkey who, "after months of persuasion by a scientist, produced the first charcoal drawing ever made by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage." The image of a confinement so complete that it dominates and shapes artistic expression (however limited it may be) is moving and powerful, and it is indeed reflected in the text of Lolita. Humbert Humbert, the novel's eloquent poet-narrator, observes the world through the bars of his obsession, his "nympholepsy", and this confinement profoundly affects the quality of his narration. In particular, his powerful sexual desires prevent him from understanding Lolita in any meaningful way, so that throughout the text what he describes is not the real Lolita, but an abstract creature, without depth or substance beyond it. beyond the complex set of symbols and allusions that he presents to him. associates with her. When, in his rare moments of exhaustion, Humbert seems to lift this literary veil, he reveals for an instant the violent contrast between his finely manipulated narration and the crude ugliness of an entirely different truth. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In one of the most elaborate and vivid scenes in the novel, Humbert excites himself to a sexual climax while Lolita sits, unknowingly, on his lap. Rejoicing in this unexpected and unnoticed accomplishment, he asserts that “Lolita has been safely solipsized” (60). Solipsism, the epistemological theory that the self is the only thing knowable and that reality consists solely of its active perceptions and modifications, very closely reflects Humbert's relationship with Lolita. Through his language, he creates a distance between Dolores and Lolita, between the child and the “solipsized” creature on whom he can “safely” impose his sexual desire. Humbert's version is a mixture of several closely related and often contradictory personal images. Some are the product of one's own imagination, while others come from classic literary works or popular songs. He makes no effort to separate these images, but moves quickly from one to the other as the narrative demands. They come together to form a new Lolita, the one who is only Humbert's projection of the original, the one who only possesses the qualities he imposes on her and who shows no evolution beyond what he allows him. persistent and reductive, is that of the nymphet. Humbert claims that this category is not his own creation but a specific natural quality to which he has given a clever name. It is well defined, although difficult to describe with precision, and it predates its members: Between nine and fourteen years young girls appear who, to certain bewitched travelers... reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic. (i.e. demonic); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate "nymphets"... Between these age limits, are all girls nymphets? Of course not. Otherwise, we who are in the know, we solitary travelers, we nympholepts, would have gone mad long ago. (16-17) This definition meets two complementary objectives. He dehumanizes the nymphet by making her foreign (“demonic”), and he absolves the passionate admirer who is not in love, but “bewitched.” Humbert can and does use this identity to justify his sexual urges towards Lolita. Seremembering the restless hour spent wandering around the Hotel des Chasseurs Enchantés, waiting for Lolita to fall into a drugged and helpless sleep, Humbert confesses that he was gravely mistaken in assuming that Lolita was helpless and innocent: I should have understood... that the nymphean evil breathing through every pore of the fairy child I had prepared for my secret delight would make the secret impossible and the delight deadly. (124-125) Through this characterization, he attributes to Lolita not only the responsibility for their first sexual encounter, but also for the suffering he will later suffer. She can do such things because she is more than human, because she is an “immortal demon disguised as a female child” (138). The dark and sexual image of the nymphet openly conflicts with another identity adopted by Lolita: that of Annabel Leigh reincarnated. From his first meeting with Lolita, Humbert assimilates her to his lost love: I have great difficulty expressing with adequate force this flash, this thrill, this impact of passionate recognition. In the sunny moment when my gaze fell on the kneeling child... the emptiness of my soul managed to suck in every detail of her brilliant beauty, and I compared them to the features of my late wife. (53) The weight of this image is much greater than it first appears, for Annabel's identity is itself a complex and inextricably nuanced tangle of meanings. By his own admission, he “remembers his features much less distinctly today than a few years ago”. By naming her Annabel Leigh, Humbert simultaneously confines and expands her to fit Poe's mythical Annabel Lee, and many of his descriptions actually contain direct references to the poem. When he meets Lolita, he transfers to her this perfect image, an artificial image which is all that remains of his first love, an image which is now the basis of his two memories and creates them thus: My true liberation [from my obsession with Annabel ] had happened... at the moment, in fact, when Annabel Haze, aka Dolores Lee, aka Loleeta, had appeared to me, golden and brown, kneeling, looking up, on that shaded veranda... (167)Here he refers to Annabel Lee, not Annabel Leigh. Humbert cannot distinguish between the original little girl and the literary filter through which he remembers her. Likewise, the image he imposes on Lolita is crystalline, artificial, colored by visions of envious angels and a mythical kingdom. Throughout the novel, Humbert's Lolita adopts countless other disguises. When overwhelmed by the despair of his love or the dangerously unstable nature of his situation, Humbert refers to Lolita as his Carmen. The name first appears as the chorus of a popular song depicting promiscuity, a song that Humbert transforms into a frenetically stilted poem about Lolita's absence. It evolves slowly, so that at the end of the novel it refers to the gypsy heroine of Merrimée's famous novel, another sometimes cruel and elusive creature. When he sees the signs of age on Lolita's face and manner, he makes her an echo of his mother, "Charlotte [rising] from her grave" (275). She can be a “mere child” (180) one moment and a “conspirator” the next (183). When, long after she escaped from him, he visits her and her husband, the changes he sees in her make him uneasy. He only finds a moment's peace when it returns to a more familiar form, a form of his own creation, when "for a moment, strangely enough, the only merciful and bearable ones in the whole interview [they] bristled l 'against each other as if it were still [his]" (272). These contrasting images, the..

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