Lolita “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
” This was how Humbert justified his treatment of Lolita. To be sure, he was a pedophile and was so with how he treated Lolita. He devised a way to have his perverse intents be satisfied by a prepubescent girl. He was cruel in satisfying his lust for and the depiction made by Nobokov is no less than shocking to the senses.
Despite this, I found myself sympathizing with him. This is unsettling.It was hard to get past through the beautiful prose penned by Nobokov to be able to understand the story. The novel was perverse, true, but not obscene.
In similar works, one need only get past through the sex to be able to understand the plot. However, in Lolita, one has to get past the language, which is made more daunting by the fact that the story is written by an unreliable author, in order to understand the story. Humbert narrates the story influenced by his own biases and by his own perceptions and emotions about the scenes and sometimes, even without real knowledge what is really happening. This leaves readers skeptic about the development of the story yet what keeps readers stick to following it is the sympathy towards the narrator because of his helplessness in his feelings for the heroine, and the flamboyant language employed by Nabokov.
Though the book was written from the narrator’s point of view, the readers can not help but recognize certain glimpses of the author present in the book as if it was the author really who was developing the story. Indeed at times, when Humbert is saying one thing, the readers could sense that the author is saying another, which is sometimes the complete opposite, making up certain complications and unreassuring feelings of from where is the story being told.
