Blog Post #5: Close Reading - Rama S.P.

Towards the end of the book we begin to see Humbert's point of view change. He looks back on what all has happened and starts to regret his actions. He has lost Lolita and now he is remembering all the good times that he had with her. However, He realizes that he has had such a good time that he hasn't gotten to know Lolita or understood her side of their relationship:

"And I have still other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen...my Lolita remarked: "You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own"; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichès, there was in her a garden and a twilight" (206)

In this passage. we see that Humbert doesn't really know the real Lolita and he regrets this. Nabokov uses words such as "monsters of pain," "simply" and "struck" to show how hurt and taken aback Humbert is. This shows us that Humbert is beginning to rethink his actions and realize that he didn't listen to Lolita at all but just used her. Diction such as "garden" and "a twilight" show that Humbert thinks Lolita is smart and maybe even philosophical and he has never bothered to pay attention to her thoughts. Unfortunately, Humbert goes on to feel guilty about his relationship with Lolita:

"Unless it can be proven to me--to me as I am now, today, with my heart and by beard, and my putrefaction--that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art." (205)

This quote is really important because this is where Humbert acknowledges that Lolita has been "deprives of her childhood." He does take some blame that he has ruined Lolita's childhood and taken advantage of her but he can "treat this misery" by looking at art. This proves that Humbert not that sorry about ruing Lolita's childhood. Then, Humbert goes on to explain how he dealt with Lolita in certain situations:

"Lolita gently beamed at a fruit knife that she fingered on the edge of the table, whereon she leaned, many miles away from me. Suddenly, as Avis clung to her father's neck and ear while, with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and large offspring, I saw Lolita's smile lose all its light and become a frozen little shadow of itself, and the fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with its silver handle a freak blow on the ankle which made her gasp, and crouch head forward, and then, jumping on one leg, her face awful with the preparatory grimace which children hold till the tears gush, she was gone--to be followed at once and consoled in the kitchen by Avis who had such a wonderful fat pink dad and a small chubby brother, and a brand-new baby sister, and a home, and two grinning dogs, and Lolita had nothing." (207)

This excerpt gives the reader a comparison to two girls who each have very different lives. Here is Avis who has a "wonderful fat pink dad", three siblings, and "two grinning dogs"; a perfect family. On the other hand, here is Lolita with only a nymphomaniac of a father. The compare and contrast of Lolita's life and Avis's life in this short paragraph shows how Lolita feels about her father's and her relationship. Words that describes Lolita's facial expression such as "gently beamed" to "lose all its light" and "preparatory grimace" tells us that Lolita is highly affected by moments like these and that she knows that she will never have it with her father. Even after observing this, Humbert tries to justify his actions towards Lolita:

"I always preferred the mental hygiene of noninterference. Now, squirming and pleading with my own memory, I recall that on this and similar occasions, it was always my habit and method to ignore Lolita's states of mind while comforting my own base self." (207)

Humbert Humbert only care for himself and this is proven with the words: "while comforting my own base self" and "noninterference." We see that Humbert is regretting his actions as he is: "squirming and pleading" with his "own memory" but it is too late; Lolita is gone. Humbert also agrees that he "Ignored Lolita's state of mind" and this shows that Humbert was almost like his absent father only caring about himself.

This series of quotes all show that Humbert towards the end of the book begins to realize that he not only ignored Lolita as a person but also used her to the point of completely destroying her childhood. There were so many instances where Lolita needed a father figure to comfort her but she never had one. She saw Humbert as only using her and she knew that she would never have a normal father daughter relationship with him. Even thought all these events have occurred, Humbert is only partly deterred because he can escape this misery with art.