Themes and Analysis

Just like all of Nabokov’s work, Lolita is great. However, through lyrical prose and an uncanny type of darkly comedic tone, Lolita stands out. Especially seeing how it dissected the human psyche to raise questions about the reliability of the conventional elements of truth.

Main Themes

Here, amongst many things, the themes explored the distorted views of man, the obsession with control and the arrogant disregard for societal laws.

• Impartial fate and control: Characters’ lives were shaped by happenstance and control.

• Taboo: The dark side of man’s desires; its alluring and destructive nature.

• Solipsism: A twisted reality blurs the line between truth and fantasy.

Styles Used

Aside the interesting storyline, the styles Nabokov used in Lolita are the core elements that glued readers to the pages.

• Musical prose: The musical prose pattern, in a poetic language created a sense of musicality.

• Unreliable narration: The skewed perspective of the narrator’s tone puts a challenge on every reader’s perception of truth.

• Dark humour: Witty, morbid and ironic humour was used to highlight the absurdity of different situations.

Symbolism

The symbolism here are empheral and multi-layered — concealing truths, whispering secrets and haunting shadows. Many enigmatic meanings to be unraveled by readers.

• Annabel Lee: The true nature of lost innocence, elusive desire and vain longings.

• The shade: Guilt and death — the dark consequences accompanying the actions of man.

• Elphinstone: Imparmanence and transience — the fleeting passing away of man’s connections.

Themes

The themes of this book make its integral part; they are the core elements that highlighted significant life areas which portrayed the writer’s brilliance and overall literary prowess.

Fate

Humbert has a strong awareness of the workings of fate in his life. Things went too perfectly for him regarding his desires for Lolita. The Mccoo’s residence he was supposed to lodge in when he got to Ramsdale burned down conveniently to steer him in the path of Charlotte’s residence and subsequently, Lolita.

Although Charlotte’s romantic interest in him appeared repulsive at first, the boon of marriage with the woman placed Humbert near his Lolita, and when Charlotte discovers his diary with all its hideous desires and plans, her plan to expose Humbert and take Lolita away from him forever is once more interrupted by fate when an absent-minded Charlotte gets run down by a car.

Taboo

The most prominent theme in Lolita is perhaps the obvious issue of taboo. Nabokov gave a fresh spin to the issue of pedophilia and equips Humbert with his immaculate rhetorical skills to defend this inclination. Throughout the narration, Humbert shows an awareness of the reaction readers would have towards his actions and so seeks to counter it with rhetorical tools. He tries to defend his impulses as natural and artistic rather than wicked and unjust.

He appeals to the general reader’s open-mindedness, as against the conventional judgments of “frigid” gentlemen and “women of the jury”.

Solipcism

Solipsism reflected in some of the main characters in Lolita. All the information we got about Lolita came from Humbert’s usual propaganda-filled narration. Consequently, while he devoted entire paragraphs in detailed, razor-sharp, and near erotic descriptions of Lolita’s physical attributes, he ignores the personality behind the body.

We get little of Lolita’s real feelings and aspirations as a result. The little times he proffers an assessment of her personality, it is almost always dismissive and uncomplimentary. For example, earlier in the novel, he proclaims that; “Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl”. 

Language as an enchanting tool

At the core, Lolita is a simple book about a pedophiliac man who obsesses over a 12-year-old little girl. The inappropriateness of Humbert’s desires and the evil of his molestations and imprisonment of Lolita should be simple enough. However, this situation is obscured by Nabokov’s subversion of normal expectation around an antagonist whose evil is expected to be displayed in an obviously vulgar and reprehensible manner. Rather Humbert describes his obsession for Lolita with depth, feeling, and rich, poetic language.

His narration is an aesthetic beauty filled with clever wordplays and vivid imageries. When he describes how he molests Lolita, he seems to us more like an artist manipulating his sexual gratifications out of a willing sexual object, and for a moment the reader is distracted from the dark reality of the situation. Using this ability to manipulate language expertly, Humbert tries to not only distract the reader from his evils but manipulate him into a more favorable judgment of his actions.

Alienation

The theme of alienation and exile from society is integral to Lolita. Humbert is forced into shadows, into a sedentary, mobile life to escape both real and imagined enemies. The continuous stretch of American highways provides freedom for him to act out his base, forbidden desires. Lolita on the other hand is trapped with Humbert and isolated from society and its promise of a normal life. Her interactions with kids her age are severely limited and she exists only as a sex slave to Humbert. So, both characters travel from town to town and hotel to hotel while feeling isolated in their own different ways.

Analysis of Key Moments in Lolita

• 1. A young Humbert and Annabel have romance, but it remains unconsummated until Annabel’s death. This results to Humbert’s pedophilic urges, or more specifically, his obsession with nymphets, as he narrates. As a key moment, this laid the foundation for Humbert’s destructive desire.

• 2. Humbert marries Valeria Zborovski. This represents Humbert’s attempt to control his pedophilic urges and live a normal life. However, the failure of his marriage to Valeria seemed to destroy this hope permanently. A key moment that shattered his assumption of having a normal life, opening him up to darker desires.  

• 3. Humbert’s erotic encounter with Dolly on the living room couch. This activity crosses a threshold and marks an escalation in Humbert’s unchecked erotic advances at Lolita. From here onwards, Humbert would only grow bolder with Lolita.

• 4. Charlotte is run over by a car as she runs to mail letters incriminating Humbert Humbert. Humbert is not only saved from exposure here but, as a key moment, an important obstacle in the way of his nefarious plans for Lolita is eliminated. The coast is now clear for Humbert to do whatever he likes to the now vulnerable Lolita.

• 5. Humbert sleeps with Lolita in the enchanted Hunters hotel. This is the point where Humbert truly claimed Lolita. Before this moment he was hesitant to touch her with her vigilance. He even resorted to drugging her so he could have sex with her. But after this sexual intercourse, the stage is set for almost constant violations that would continue until Lolita escapes. All he needed was the first successful attempt.

• 6. Dolly’s piano teacher mentions in a phone conversation with Humbert that Dolly has missed two lessons. Humbert and Dolly fight, Dolly runs away but is found by Humbert. It is at this point that Lolita, aided by the mysterious Quilty, takes the initiative and begins to scheme her escape from Humbert — here marks the beginning of her journey to freedom. 

• 7. Humbert telephones the hospital and learns that Dolly had left the day before. Lolita’s loss devastates Humbert and fills him with an unquenchable heartbreak and desire for revenge against the person who took her away from him — a resort that marked the beginning of his downfall.

• 8. Humbert meets a pregnant Lolita and her husband. Humbert meets a much-changed, heavily pregnant Lolita that is now an adult, but he still loves her and wants her to run away with him. She declines, however, but appears to bear no grudge against Humbert for all he did to her — this shows the lasting power of obsession even in the face of time and pain.

• 9. Humbert murders Quilty. Although heartbroken and somewhat repentant for all he had done to Lolita, Humbert’s desire for anger against Quilty remains strong. He murders Quilty after both of them fight, roll and struggle multiple times in a scene that highlights both character’s similarities — a twisted climax of his obsession and the cementing of his destruction.

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language

The style, tone, and figurative language filled the book with so much liveliness and elegance, and layers of sophistication, yet simple. Paradox? Yeah.

Style

The writer used a sufficient dose of dark humor in many instances, for example, Humbert, upon killing Quilty and recounting his actions, commented:

“I had killed him, but I also saved him the ghastly embarrassment of listening to my poetry.”

What favour is done to a person if their life were taken just to spare them from listening to a terrible poetry? This fills the reader with with annoyance from the terrible act of the character, and laughter at the flimzy excuse he adopted in a very shallow attempt to justify his action. This juxtaposition violence of and wits showcases the dark side of Humbert’s character.

Tone

The tone is of a first-person narration, the entire story depended on that voice for the facts. However, the voice is an unreliable narrator who is often dishonest. Lolita is an attempt by Humbert, a morally repugnant pedophile, to plead his case before readers in such a manner that they might sympathize with him.

To do this, he takes advantage of his education and background as a student of Literature to weave poetic prose that not only seeks to distract readers with its dazzling brilliance, but casts his perverse desires as legitimate, noble, and helpless, as the case may be. As a result, readers often find themselves shocked to be moved by Humbert’s narration to the point where they begin to sympathize with him despite the gravity of his offense.

Humbert ensnares readers into sympathy through enchanting prose, half-truths, deprecatory humor, and scathing criticism of American culture that a lot of the readers relate with. Humbert also sometimes refers to himself in the third person, perhaps signaling that the Humbert narrating the story has changed a lot from the Humbert in the narration — a testament of the earlier mentioned unreliable narration.

Figurative Language

Nabokov gifts Humbert his flair for aesthetically pleasing prose. For example, the very first sentence of Humbert’s narration is memorable for its poetic quality. The lines:

Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin. My soul

features impressive sound play and great depth of feeling. 

Humbert hides the illicit behind more innocent words. “Life,” as used in the above quote in Lolita, is also likely a euphemism for the penis. This would become more apparent when he mentions later on that: “My life was handled by little Lo in an energetic, matter-of-fact manner as if it were an insensate gadget unconnected with me.”

Through evocative imagery, he lets objects in the background also reflect his mood. For example, when all his designs threaten to fall apart after Charlotte discovers his diary and starts raining curses on him, his description of a simple act of making a drink evokes powerful images that capture his panic.

He opens the refrigerator to take the drink but the normal chill that greets him appears to him as a “vicious roar.” He “removed the ice from its heart,” with the ice cubes producing “rasping, crackling, tortured sounds” as the warm water loosened them “in their cells”. In another instance, while Humbert goes to meet with Dolly at the lobby of the Enchanted Hunters hotel, he realizes a man was intently staring at him “over a dead cigar and stale newspaper”. The man happens to be Clare Quilty and the images “dead” and “stale” foreshadow the pain Quilty would bring to him, as well as the dreadful fate that awaits all of them.

Key Symbols 

The significant symbols Nabokov spread in this story, does what a marinade does to a forked steak marinated overnight; it seem to be just on the outside, it is deep inside too.

Annabel Lee 

In Annabel Lee, the narrator narrates his deep love for a girl who died at a young age many years ago “in a kingdom by the sea. The narrator proclaimed that they loved each other “with a love that was more than love” and with an intensity that aroused the envy of the “winged seraphs of heaven” who then took Annabel’s life. Humbert Humbert tried to connect his infatuation with his youthful love to what we have seen in Poe’s poem. Nabokov names her Annabel Lee, after the girl in Poe’s poem, and Humbert Humbert ties his memory of Annabel Lee to cues from Poe’s poem.

Elphinstone 

Humbert Humbert’s rich imagination leads him to not only solipsize Lolita but to infuse his narration with imaginary, fairytale-like elements. This also closely mirrors his strong sense of fate. This quality of Humbert is aided by Nabokov’s own machinations that more smoothly connect Humbert’s imaginative or artistic indulgences.

Humbert Humbert would lose Lolita in the town of Elphinstone, a name that contains a ring of “Elf” within it. So, Humbert’s fairy tale begins in the town of “elf” and ends in “Elph’s stone”. This adds a supernatural element consistent with the already thick sense of fate. Humbert’s story acquires the symbolism of a fairytale, although there is no happy ending for him. It is another way in which Nabokov speaks through the novel, highlighting the irony of Humbert’s references and parodying an ancient literary genre in the process.

The Shade

The name “Humbert” closely resembles the Latin word for Shade. The symbolism of the shade is prevalent in Lolita and best represents Humbert’s status as an outcast in society owing to his unnatural and forbidden sexual inclinations. His pedophilia or ‘nymphetry’ is well-hidden from public view and represents an underground.

With his attempts to marry or have relationships with normal adults, Humbert would signal his desire to move away from the shade into the outside world, but the strength of his obsession would always pull him back to the shade. Clare Quilty’s presence in large patches of the novel also represents a kind of shade or shadow because of its hidden but ubiquitous nature.

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe, where Lolita and Humbert took a pause in their tour in America, is one of the biggest key symbols in the book. It embodies a troubling symbol of Lolita’s chaotic inner world, even though it seemed calm outside. The lake’s serenity bellies its current — in the same vein, Lolita’s childhood innocence is a concealer of her trauma and inner turmoils caused by Humbert’s incessant manipulations.

The lake, being a threshold between land and water, perfectly reflects Lolita’s unsteady balance between childhood and adulthood, as Humbert’s nefariousness prevented her from enjoying the full joy and innocence that comes with childhood. 

The Garden

During Humbert and Lolita’s visit to McCoo’s family home, the garden featured in that scene was very symbolic. Like an enchanting mirage, it is nice, beautiful and tantalizing with so much lushness — so vibrant like an oasis, with so much darkness underneath it like the dark and concealed side of Humbert’s evil desires. Just like the gardener’s guide, cut, and trimming determines how the flowers grow, Humbert, in the same vein, attempted to control Lolita by manipulating her for the sole purpose of cultivating her youthful beauty.

The garden’s beauty and eventual decay reflects Lolita’s contaminated beauty and lost Innocence. In yet another poignant metaphor, like the flowers therein, Lolita became uprooted from her healthy and familiar ground to a terrain that puts her at high susceptibility to maliciousness.

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