Decoding The Classics ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov

Ever wanted to get into the twisted mind of a man with an insatiable fixation on little girls?

Humbert Humbert, as he is known in Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel meets Annabel Leigh in his childhood during a vacation to the French Riviera at the tender age of 13. He would forever remember the walks on the beach and experimental displays of affection that came with the hormonal outbursts of his age.

Months after the consummation of this beckoning love, she tragically passes away from typhus in Corfu. That is heavy iron for a fragile heart to handle. You cannot help but feel sorry for the poor chap. This moment in his life would cement his life-long obsession with the 9 to 12 age group, which he referred to as nymphets.

Humbert was born in Paris to a wealthy family. He lived there for many years and found himself adding an unsuccessful marriage to his personal profile before leaving to America.

He motivated himself to enter the institution of marriage in an effort to suppress his felonious desires. This was all triggered after his frequent affairs with nymphet prostitute Monique comes to a halt after she matures with age.

He marries Valeria because she was a child at heart and he appreciated her Barbie-like features. But Humbert was a sapiosexual and the lack of intellectual conversation and clever wit turned him off in a colossal way.

Eventually, due to the lack of ‘action’ she began an affair with a taxi driver. He finds out all of this when a wealthy uncle from the US dies and leaves a pretty penny for him in his will, under the condition that he move to the United States and learn more about business. He attempts to convince her to come with him and at some point she cracks reveals and everything.

The catastrophe of unrequited love led him to a mental institution due to his plan to kill her. His bouts or rage and cruelty foreshadow the character of a calculating killer. This is when he moves to the US to start a new life as an English teacher.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta.” said Humbert in the opening of his memoir, brought forth by John Ray Jr, an editor of psychological works.

The plot follows the confessions and writings of Humbert in this memoir as the protagonist is no longer with us. It reveals the trail of events leading to memories of his childhood, his encounters with Annabel and then ultimately meeting Dolores Haze, who he witnesses sunbathing upon visiting Charlotte, Lolita’s mother.

At that particular moment he comes to the conclusion that Lolita is the perfect nymphet.

Humbert meets Charlotte – a widow looking for tenants – after his house burns down when he moves to the small town of Ramsdale in New England. He is initially not pleased with the place but finds himself changing his mind after taking that fateful gaze of Lolita sunbathing. This is where things get weird.

Humbert becomes obsessed and precariously tracks her every move. He flirted with her and expounded on his pedophiliac urges. He journals all these encounters with Lolita, romanticising her in the most intellectually exquisite descriptions you will ever read.

The name Lolita means a sexually precocious young girl. In Nabakov’s story, she would say things that taunted Humbert’s inner demon. In a failed attempt by Humbert to sedate her in a hotel room and proceed to sexually defile her, she wakes up the next morning snuggled against him and asks Humbert questions about sex in his youth. Lolita reveals that she has had experiences in the past. This conversation proves to initiate and fulfill Humbert’s wishes of passionately sharing a moment with Lolita. His perfect nymphet.

“I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man’s child. She could fade and wither – I didn’t care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.”

The book follows a series of twists and calculated killings of a functional psychotic person. It is provocative and not for the faint hearted.

If you’re looking to test the depths of your objectivity and muster strength to understand the nature of a corrupted and traumatised man, you can not help but love and hate the man. It is the greatest conflict of admiration and hate in modern classical literature.

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