The Magic in the Forest (or in the Trees) Lolita is disturbing – when I actually step back and think about it: A man who falls deeply, madly in love with a young girl, never really notices that at times she is unwilling to stay with him, and objectifies her, never troubling to learn about […]
Sex, Death, and Lexiconsiousness This week, while reading Nabokov’s masterpiece, I was also traveling around the National Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. My absorption of the narrative was contextualized by the event — Japanese trees in bloom, tourists and GW students of all ages, races, intellects, couplings, and persuasions.
Humbert Humbert and Class From the outset of Nabokov’s Lolita, it is apparent that issues of culture and class will be of considerable importance to the unfolding of the narrative. Humbert Humbert is born of parents of different ethnic backgrounds and grows up in the life of a privileged child in Western Europe. His early […]
Jean- Jacques Humbert—in Nabokov’s Foucauldian universe—cannot relinquish his desire for his dear Annabel; obsessed over the image of his first love, Humbert falls out of an unsuccessful marriage and ultimately lands in 342 Lawn street, Ramsdale. Here, he resurrects the image of his lost love through Dolores Haze—daughter of a single mother, twelve years of […]
Nabokov writes with beautiful ambiguity. He uses words in a way that makes the reader question what she just read and, perhaps, turn back to read it again. An example of this is seen in Chapter 13 when Humbert apparently masturbates on the couch next to Lolita while she is oblivious to what he is […]
Dolores, or Lolita Something very intriguing to me in Nabokov’s Lolita is the fact that Humbert Humbert needed to create a separate identity for Dolores (much like, as Jaslee pointed out, he needs to create “nymphets” to rationalize his lust for young girls.) To him, Dolores is hardly ever Dolores – she is sometimes Lo, […]
While reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita my first instinct was to identify Foucault’s four strategic unities. A simple task, as it turned out, for this beautifully written text couldn’t have set up the four unities more clearly: the hysterical woman (Charlotte), the masturbating child (Dolly), the Malthusian couple (Humbert & Charlotte), and the perverse adult (Humbert […]
Lolita as a Foucauldian Case Study Reading the introduction to Lolita invoked a strong sense of déjà vu, which I realized came from the uncanny similarities between it and “The Custom House”. Both introductions serve to set up the stories as “true” (or in terms of The Scarlet Letter, based on a true story). More […]
Dirty Old Men Before I get into my reaction to Part I of Lolita, I must say that I really love the author’s writing. That said, I am thoroughly disturbed and disgusted by Humbert Humbert. I’ll cut here for spoilers.
