My Guilty Pleasure I'm Not So Guilty About

It is bizarre to me how Vladimir Nabokov can transform something that is as taboo as pedophilia into something surprisingly poetic and engaging. While reading Lolita, I found myself sickened, and yet mesmerized at the same time. How could that be? It seems as though I have discovered my guilty pleasure. Nabokov’s novel rallies around a forbidden and perverse love affair between a twelve year old girl, Lolita, and a thirty-seven year old man, Humbert. (Disclaimer: By referring to this novel as my ‘guilty pleasure’, I am not by any means expressing approval of the relationship between Lolita and Humbert in reality, merely in theory.) Humbert Humbert, the main character, finds himself lusting over young girls, whom he refers to as ‘nymphets’. His lust is the backbone of the novel, as the reader follows him on his journey to make up for the loss of his adolescent love by trying to find new love with his favorite little nymphet, Lolita.

The novel starts with the introduction of Lolita, before the reader even knows who the narrator, Humbert, is. The then anonymous narrator introduces her as, “...Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.” From the last sentence, the reader can foreshadow a relationship of some sort, and possibly even a love affair (at least a one-way love, from the direction of Humbert), between him and Lolita. The reader then learns that this lust for Lolita stems from Humbert’s past love for Lolita’s precursor, “a certain initial girl-child”, Annabel, who suffered a premature death from typhus. Strangely, from the moment Humbert met Lolita, all I wanted was for them to be together. I put the age difference in the back of my mind, and was rooting for them throughout a majority of the story. This hopeful feeling that enveloped me stemmed from Humbert’s sharing the story his heartbreaking relationship with Annabel to the reader. He reflects on their relationship, sharing with the reader that, “The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today. Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams.” Somehow, him being certain that he would never love again, and then meeting Lolita and changing his views, allows the reader to relate in a way that helps them to forget about the perverse nature of Humbert’s lust for Lolita.

The aspects of Lolita that make it come across as disturbing and immoral are diminished by Nabokov’s writing style. His eloquent and lyrical prose could make even the most sadistic act seem acceptable, the most unattractive person appear beautiful, or the most heartbreaking tale somewhat blissful. He can make the reader feel as though they are present in 1948, in Humbert’s shoes, facing the same moral dilemmas, having the same heart wrenching feelings, and witnessing the same sights. Towards the end of the story, Nabokov allows the reader, in merely two sentences, to become Humbert’s eyes: “One could make out the geometry of the streets between blocks of red and gray roofs, and green puffs of trees, and a serpentine stream, and the rich, ore-like glitter of the city dump, and beyond the town, roads crisscrossing the crazy quilt of dark and pale fields, and behind it all, great timbered mountains. But even brighter than those quietly rejoicing colors - for there are colors and shades that seem to enjoy themselves in good company - both brighter and dreamier to the ear than they were to the eye, was that vapory vibration of accumulated sounds that never ceased for a moment, as it rose to the lip of granite where I stood wiping my foul mouth.” It is Nabokov’s beautiful writing, his dynamic characters, and ingeniously crafted suspense that makes readers, such as myself, surprised to find themselves engulfed by Lolita. (680)