Group B, Post 2, Lolita: "light of my life, fire on my loins. My sin, my soul" by Kathleen Paxtor

Lolita is about a man, in his 40’s, named Humbert and 12 year old Delores (or Lo) and their intimate affair with each other. Just by the first sentence it is quite easy to judge that this book is immediately wrong and sick, and I too was once quick to judge but it is so much more than that, Lolita opens a pathway to question love, life, and fate.

In the beginning of the book/movie a memoir is sent to John Ray titled “Lolita”, this came from Humbert who had recently died in prison. The memoir explains all of Humbert’s losses, experiences and regrets. He explains that ever since his childhood love died, Annabel, little girls infatuated him. One day he is looking for a place to stay when he stumbles upon the house of Charlotte (Lo’s mom) and Delores. He quickly is possessed by his need for being around Lo that he marries Charlotte just to be near Lo. One day Charlotte finds out the intention behind Humbert and storms off angry and gets run over by a car; just like that Humbert and Lo are finally together. Humbert takes Lo far away and they become very intimate (sexually and emotionally); their relationship develops as what you could say is a dominant and submissive. In this case Lo became the dominant because she realized the powers she had over Humbert, she knew that whenever she needed something Humbert would give in. After a while passes, Lo runaway with another older gentlemen named Quilty who insists she does child pornography but Lo refuses. Many years later after Humbert searched for Lo years and years he receives a letter from her saying she is pregnant and need money. Humbert drops everything and goes to find her. He sees Lo (now about 17) pregnant and now married, he begs her to come back with him but she says no. Humbert gives her all his money and goes to find Quilty and kills him. Humbert ends up in jail and dies there from heart failure, while Lo dies during childbirth; that is how the book ends, no happy ending, no recovery, no salvation, just death and harsh real life.

Like I had previously said if anyone else had read/hear the summary with no context it could be perceived as being just sick and in a way it is, but in another way it is beautiful (not the act of pedophilia) but the meaning behind the way Lo’s life developed. As a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, I never truly understood what that reason was for everything that happened to Lo. When I first read the book my mind was all over the place, I wanted to hate Humbert yet I his persuasive writing made me think of him as not a pedophile but as a regular love driven guy. In the film/book, Lo is perceived as being “unvirginal long before Humbert came upon the scene, so knowing, so jaded, so unchildlike” (Vickers). This is not to say that Humbert had every right to do what he did because he didn’t, but to him every little thing Lo did just made him weaker and relentless to have her. For a teenage child, Lo lived an unexpected life, from being orphaned, kidnapped, raped, and sexualized, to just end up dead sounds horrid but unfortunately that is every day life for some. I think the meaning behind Lolita is to show the normalness of two people living their lives (in a way that we may not agree with) just to end up the same like all us, dead. It was an emotional, confusing rollercoaster but and the end of the day you realize that “the desperate truth of Lolita’s story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man, but the confiscation of one individual’s life by another. Although we cannot know what Lolita’s life might have been like had Humbert not hijacked it, “the novel, the finished work, is hopeful, beautiful even, a defense not just of beauty but of life, ordinary everyday life, all the normal pleasures that Lolita, was deprived of” (Vickers). And much like Lo felt conflicted with the way her life took a turn, I felt conflicted with her life and how it compared to mine.

*Side Note: If you watch ever watch the movie or (especially) read the book I thought it was interesting how Nabokov made Humbert so literate and beautifully spoken. His writing was poetic yet the acts he wrote about were not. 

References:

Vickers, Graham. Chasing Lolita : How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov's Little Girl All Over Again, Chicago Review Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central,