Lolita Response

Lolita, for me, was clearly split into its two parts, with the first part being completely focused on Humbert’s lust for girls (mostly Lolita, but also covering his first love and, later, his observations of other children), and the second part being more outwardly focused, on landscapes and Lolita’s other friend and admirers. 

I finished the first half of the book for the previous class, and at the time I was pretty excited about it. It was very uncomfortable to read, but it was also exciting to watch as the narrator slowly moved in on Lolita. He wrote on and on about how beautiful she was, and would get aroused over the tiniest things. His extremely poetic writing even made me fall in love with Lolita, for a moment here and there, until I caught myself. He constantly drops in lengthy descriptions; “there my beauty lay down on her stomach, showing me, showing the thousand eyes wide open in my eyed blood, her slightly raised shoulder blades, and the bloom along the incurvation of her spine, and the swellings of her tense narrow nates clothed in black” and it’s not until I get to “and the seaside of her schoolgirl thighs” that I remember this should me making me feel uncomfortable. These little events and observations escalate, as do the narrator’s fantasies and plans about Lolita, until the book reaches a dramatic climax when he finally makes love to her.

After that, though, I feel like the tone of the novel completely changes. Although Humbert still drops in notes on how beautiful “his Lolita” is, the frenetic and borderline-orgasmic quality of his observations seems lost. I feel like it wasn’t until this point that I started to understand Lolita’s personality, as that barrier created by Humbert’s obsessive lust for her was lessened and I could see her more clearly.  At this point, actually, this loving poetry that he used to reserve for Lolita is now directed towards the landscapes they pass through on their road trips around the country. He goes on and on about this travels: “heart and sky- piercing snow-veined gray colossi of stone, relentless peaks appearing from nowhere at a turn of the highway; timbered enormities, with a system of neatly overlapping dark firs, interrupted in places by pale puffs of aspen; pink and lilac formations”.

I chose to focus on these two quotes (really, these two types of quotes), because they not only present themes for the book and characterize Humbert, but also they make up a big percentage of the actual text. A huge amount of the book was spent with the narrator lapsing into long, rambling (but very pleasant to read and almost musical) discussions of Lolita or landscape, and these passages were probably what made the book so enjoyable. Listening to the book being read, it really sounded musical at times. In another style of writing, this book would probably have been too uncomfortable or weird, but written as it was it really pulled me in and kept me reading (listening) for the entire story.