Meaning of the Work

SPOILER ALERT!

In order to write about the meaning of the work as a whole for my third blog post, I decided to finish Lolita. To keep up the pattern in my previous posts, I’m going to summarize what has since happened in the novel. If you have not finished the book yet, don’t read any further!!

Since we left Humbert wandering the country aimlessly with his indifferent nymphet, he developed enough trust in Lolita to settle down in a small New England town where she could enroll in the Beardsley school for girls. At Beardsley, Lolita neglected her school work but developed an affinity for acting, leading her to audition for the school play named, eerily, The Enchanted Hunter. During this period, Lolita matured greatly to the point that she turned the tables on Humbert and began to blackmail him.

For the next year, Lolita forced Humbert to take her on a second road trip to wherever she pleased in exchange for her silence. Humbert did not find the arrangement particularly unpleasant until he noticed a red car trailing them. For several weeks, a mysterious figure evaded Humbert but managed to make contact with Lolita whenever he turned his back. It does not take long for Humbert to realize that this man was a love interest.

One day, Lolita confessed that she had felt extremely feverish, and Humbert rushed her to the hospital. In her hospital room, Lolita gradually improved, but in his hotel room, Humbert grew ill. After a day of not being able to leave his bed, Humbert ventured to the hospital to retrieve Lolita only to discover that, “her uncle, Mr. Gustave, had called for her with a cocker spaniel pup and a smile for everyone, and a black Caddy Lack, and had paid Dolly’s bill in cash, and told them to tell me I should not worry, and keep warm, they were at Grandpa’s ranch as agreed” (246).

The man, of course, was not actually her uncle but the mysterious lover, and Lolita had escaped Humbert’s prison without a trace. For two years, Humbert hopelessly searched for his lost love, but her second kidnapper was clever enough to erase his trail of everything except tantalizing clues, including the anagrammed name left in a hotel guest book, “Ted Hunter, Cane, NH” (251).   

Humbert nearly gave up hope of ever seeing his Lolita again, until one day, he received a brief letter claiming that she was married but in need of money. He immediately drove to her aid, and begged her to give him a second chance.

“Are you quite, quite sure that — well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow, but — well — some day, any day, you will not come to live with me? I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope” (to that effect).

“No,” she said smiling, “no.”

After that final heartbreak, the only remaining purpose Humbert perceived in his life was to hunt down the man who had stolen his Lolita away, a man called “Cue.” After an elaborate, dramatic confrontation in Cue’s home, Humbert managed to kill him with a revolver. He then proceeded to drive away, but figured that he “had disregarded all laws of humanity, so [he] might as well disregard the rules of traffic.” (306) By driving on the wrong side of the highway, Humbert attracted the attention of the policemen who brought him to the very jail cell from which he introduced himself on the first page of the novel.

(Still from the 1962 film adaptation)

Now we can move on to my interpretation of the fundamental ideas behind Lolita. This is probably going to be the hardest post that I will write considering the subject matter of the novel, but here’s my attempt.

In my opinion, the central argument and moral of the novel is that morality is far more complex than society is taught to believe. By trying to convince readers that he was justified in most of his actions, Humbert tries to prove that right and wrong are not black and white like the laws that we are forced to abide. His lyrical writing style that testifies to his passionate, unyielding love for Lolita is designed to make readers see past the gap in their ages that defines their relations as statutory rape. Through the consistency of this writing style, Humbert (and the author) suggest that all love should be accepted, no matter the form it takes.

The flaw with Humbert’s reasoning, of course, is that Humbert’s “love” for Lolita can hardly be called love. Several times throughout the novel, Humbert mentioned his distaste for Dolores’ behavior, values, and personality, and essentially, all the major components of her character. The “love” he describes for Dolores was not for her but for the persona he invented for her (Lolita), her youth, and her body. In fact, after coming to the realization that Lolita’s youth was escaping her, Humbert described her growing unattractiveness in the following passage: “Oh she had changed! Her complexion was now that of any vulgar untidy highschool girl who applies shared cosmetics with grubby fingers to an unwashed face and does not mind what soiled texture, what pustulate epidermis comes in contact with her skin...” (204).

Furthermore, Humbert’s passion for Lolita was unrequited. As seen in the bolded quote above, Lolita never loved Humbert and stayed with him for three years solely because she was tricked into believing she had no other options. During their second road trip, Humbert reveals that Lolita “sobs in the night - every night, every night - the moment I feign sleep” (176). The one-sided, unreciprocated nature of Humbert’s affection is what makes his relationship different than all the others that were cited throughout the novel. His sexual relations with Lolita were not consensual and were therefore, unquestionably, rape.

Due to the fact that Humbert’s passion for Lolita was something entirely separate from authentic love, I don’t believe that his actions can be viewed as ethical using any complex understanding of morality. I agree that in many situations, the morality of actions is not black and white, but rape is so fundamentally and majorly unethical that it can not be justified in any situation.

Another major theme of the novel is summarized well in a quote from Vladimir Nabokov that does not come from Lolita: “Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar.” The theme of beauty going unrecognized by society is a persistent one throughout the novel, and it relates to the former theme of morality in that Nabokov’s portrayal of Humbert’s obsession as beautiful is the primary way in which he leads readers to believe his actions are acceptable.

The theme of beauty going unrecognized is often conveyed through Humbert’s beautiful descriptions of scenery to which Lolita turned a blind eye. The following quote is an excerpt from Humbert’s description of the beauty he witnessed on his first roadtrip. “Beyond the tilled plain, beyond the toy roofs, there would be a slow suffusion of inutile loveliness, a low sun in a platinum haze with a warm, peeled-peach tinge pervading the upper edge of a two-dimensional, dove-gray cloud fusing with the distant amorous mist. There might be a line of spaced trees silhouetted against the horizon, and hot still noons above a wilderness of clover, and Claude Lorrain clouds inscribed remotely into misty azure with only their cumulus part conspicuous against the neutral swoon of the background. Or again, it might be a stern El Greco horizon, pregnant with inky rain...” (152). This quote is a perfect example of how Humbert ties imagery together with love throughout the novel. He uses words like “loveliness, amorous, swoon, and pregnant” to get readers to subconsciously associate the love discussed in the novel with such beauty, making them more open to the idea that beauty can be found in the strange places that Humbert suggests it can be. Immediately after this quote, Lolita is described as being completely disinterested in her surroundings, which additionally adds to the idea that beauty is too often unappreciated.

Several times throughout the novel, Humbert attempts to draw out the beauty in things that are traditionally considered unattractive or beautiful in a different way (his nymphets). In one of the last scenes, for example, Humbert glorifies the bloody, haphazard murder of the man who helped Lolita run away from him. This second idea that beauty exists in many places where people assume it does not is again something I have trouble agreeing with.

To summarize, the two major thematic ideas in Lolita are that morality is so complex that even rape can be condoned, and that beauty can be found in the seemingly ugliest of places. What are your thoughts on the ideas? Do you agree with either one of them, unlike me?