Literary Merit?

Hello again bloggers!

In this blog post, I will be discussing the literary merit of Lolita.

To answer the obvious question, I 100% believe that despite its disturbing content, Lolita is a novel of literary merit. Not only is Lolita one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, the novel is chock full of literary devices, and the story is told through the point of view of an untrustworthy narrator who is trying to manipulate his audience. The material on each page is so dense and complex that it took me almost two minutes to read one!

After having read only half the book, I wrote a blog post about Vladimir Nabokov’s writing style. Everything in that post still stands true; all of the literary devices discussed in the post persisted through the end of the novel. In addition to those literary devices, even more were incorporated into the second half of Humbert’s story, namely, the motif of “enchanted hunters.” “Enchanted Hunters” was the name of the first hotel that Lolita and Humbert stayed in together, and it was also the name of the play that Lolita acted in. As the term was used more and more throughout the novel, it became a symbol for pedophiles. For example, in the quote, “now and then it seemed to me that the enchanted prey was about to meet halfway the enchanted hunter, that her haunch was working its way toward me under the soft sand of a remote and fabulous beach” (131), Humbert compares himself to an enchanted hunter and Lolita to “enchanted prey,” suggesting her defenselessness as a child and victim.

I believe that Lolita is challenging enough to be worthy of inclusion in an AP curriculum due to the intensive analysis that reading the novel requires. In four blog posts now, I have analyzed how figurative language, motifs, allusions, imagery, appeals to logos, appeals to ethos, themes, and point of view have all proven crucial to thoroughly understanding Lolita. The novel could therefore be useful to learn about any one of those literary devices. Similarly to The Handmaid’s Tale, there are several short passages in the novel that contain so many devices and thematic ideas that entire class periods could be spent picking them apart. The following is an example of such a passage:

“Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa — and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty” (59).

This passage makes allusions to three separate fairy tales, Snow White, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, and it is one of the first incorporations of the motif of fairy tales and magic. The allusions serve to normalize and idealize Humbert’s desire for Lolita by forcing readers to associate magic and fairy tales with their strange relationship. Additionally, the passage introduces the idea of beasts versus beauty that compares to the motif of enchanted hunters versus enchanted prey. The passage also reveals that Humbert truly views himself as a “beast” and recognizes the evil in his ways, but in order to assuage his guilt, he attempts to convince readers otherwise. A great class discussion could be held about the effect that Humbert’s narration has on readers.

The incorporation of so many literary devices additionally provides for myriad interpretations of Humbert’s story. The passage above is easily interpreted because it does not include figurative language, but there are countless other instances throughout the novel when it is possible for the reader to completely gloss over an event, even an important one, when it is not directly stated. The possibility for so many different interpretations and analyses of Humbert’s words is one of the main reasons why Lolita is a work of literary merit.

Finally, there are several ways that knowledge gained from reading Lolita could be useful on the AP English Literature exam. The most impactful of those ways is probably by improving readers’ close-reading skills. Nearly every page of the novel requires interpretation of figurative language, and such close-reading practice would be exceptionally useful as preparation for Question 2 on the exam. Another way Lolita could be useful to AP students is that it includes several unique themes that not many other novels of literary merit contain, a quality that would be particularly useful for Question 3 on the exam. Such themes include morality, justice/judgement, youth, love, communication, and beauty.

In conclusion, Lolita is, in my opinion, a work of literary merit that would make a great addition to an AP curriculum. I believe that reading the novel will help me greatly on the AP test this May, and best of all, I enjoyed reading it. I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on the literary merit of Lolita, especially since it is such a controversial novel!