Lolita, Part Two
Even after thinking about it for the past few days, I’m struggling to come with up connections between Lolita and the readings in Major Problems, and want to have this up tonight so I’m going to try and provide analysis in a different way and edit the post later if I can form a cohesive argument for something.
Part Two was a more intensive reading assignment for me than last week’s. I think I loved Part One of Lolita so much because of the word play, puns, double talk, descriptive and unusual narrative (unusual in the sense of descriptions, for one), and my appreciation for that style carried through to the last page of Part One. However, in Part Two, the upsetting and disturbing nature of HH’s recollections of a very, very different Lolita couldn’t be shadowed by Nabakov’s great writing. As Sami mentioned in her post, Humbert’s vision, experience and memory of a stable, acceptable, promising run-away life with Lolita begins to crack and he begins to recollect more disturbing scenes from their time together. In Chapter 32 in particular, Nabakov allows us to see more elements of the story and of HH’s character in one chapter than in any previous chapter. HH’s passion, regret, insanity, psychology, realizations and more are all thrown together in a few short pages and suddenly, instead of including a sincere, thoughtful and consequently upsetting anecdote into one scene, the entire scene was an outburst of uncensored admissions and pleas from HH’s innermost thoughts – shocking and hurtful and revealing though they might be.
I wonder what I can tease out from the fact that Part 2 is more disturbing to me than Part 1 because of both HH’s gradually reduced grasp on reality as he writes as well as the newfound information we gain regarding Lolita’s status during their years together. What does it say about Nabakov as a writer that HH’s actions and thoughts were as-good-as excused in my head for the first half of the novel, simply because the writing made it easy for me to make that so? And moreso, what does it say about me?
