An Examination of the Effect of Language in Lolita

What really is reality? How can we define reality? The very nature of such a subjective subject means that there are as many answers as there are questioning minds on the planet. Therefore, reality can only be defined as what it means to each of us. We learn particular ways of looking at life from our experiences, which we gain from our interactions with others. This is the basis of an elaborate theory called "the social construction of reality." In modern America, one of the largest social groups to which we can belong, certain values are instilled into our impressionable minds; for example, not many of us would accept pedophilia. Or would we? What if our interactions with others molded our susceptible minds so well, and so discreetly, that we came to casually accept pedophilia without knowing we were being deftly manipulated? This is the magic of Lolita, which does just that. The richness and playfulness of Humbert’s prose; prominent allusions; foreshadowing; and eloquence; makes it difficult to relate to Humbert as anything less than a masterful lyricist, much less a pedophilic murderer, and pushes the reader to twist ethics until the situation is no longer seen from society’s eyes, but from Humbert’s. In fact, the complex riddles that Vladimir Nabokov employs beyond Humbert’s own words, which further include such devices as foreshadowing and obscure jokes, cause us to become so absorbed in the cleverness of the book and its author that we nearly dismiss pedophilia as second nature to the intricate use of language. Once our morals are firmly in place, it’s difficult for us to imagine them being warped or even forgotten, but Lolita manages to make us question the solidness of our ethics solely, amazingly, through some of the most effective and affective string of words captures on paper.

We relate to Humbert first and foremost because the book itself is a subjective vision. It is a first person account of Humbert’s life with Dolores Haze, a.k.a. Lolita, told through his own words and his own eyes. Lolita is not about Lolita at all, but Humbert’s vision of a "Lolita" (Wood 115). His search for a "nymphet," a word he coined himself, to replace his childhood love, led him to Dolores. He shaped her in his eyes into the little girl he wanted to see, not necessarily the little girl she really was. Since the book is told through Humbert, however, we also see Lolita as the little girl he wanted to see, and so the story is presented more like a tragic romance than a hedonistic pedophilic getting what he deserves. "Distracted by his charm, his wit, his intelligence, and - yes - his murderer’s fancy prose style, we may momentarily forget that he is indeed the monster he says he is" (Rivers and Nicol 153). He additionally appeals to the reader’s sympathy by speaking directly to us, frequently addressing the audience as "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury" or some variant (Wood 113); he is, remember, supposedly writing a document to aid in his defense at his trial. The one on one communication aids in feeling some casualness between the narrator and his reader; isn’t it hard to castigate a friend?

Humbert repeatedly shows us his charm, wit, and self-professed murderer’s fancy prose style. His high-brow, intellectual allusions are scattered throughout his narrative to remind us of his wit form the first chapter when one first delves into Humbert’s word until we see his last collapse into wretchedness. One of the first allusions is in Humbert’s explanation of how Lolita came to be, as an incarnation of his childhood love, Annabel Leigh. Was it coincidental or intentional that she bears this name, remarkably similar to Edgar Allen Poe's poem "Annabel Lee?" Given the similarities between the poem and Humbert’s situation, coincidence is not a likely option. Humbert probably gave her the name as an allusion to Poe’s own Annabel. "I was a child and she was a child, / In this kingdom by the sea . . ." (Poe 1). The poem could very easily have been an account of Humbert’s first tryst. He was a child and Annabel Leigh was a child, in their akin "princedom by the sea" (Nabokov 9).

Even when deep and desperate in desolation, Humbert’s allusions still come. The poem he forces Quilty to read before his death echoes of an allusion to T.S. Eliot's poem "Ash Wednesday." Eliot’s poem starts with an abrupt first few lines: "Because I do not hope to turn again / Because I do not hope / Because I do not hope to turn . . ." (Eliot 1). Humbert borrows Eliot’s curtness and Quilty is made to read, "Because you took advantage of a sinner / Because you took advantage / Because you took / Because you took advantage of my disadvantage . . ." (Nabokov 299).

Humbert exercises his substantial knowledge with allusions beyond famous American poetry. He frequently calls his Dolores "Carmen," or "Carmencita," in reference to Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen. Carmen is, like Lolita, a story of jealousy, unfaithfulness, and was not well received in its time because it was considered immoral. Both Humbert and Lolita could be likened to characters in Carmen, but there is a difference between the two stories. "Don Jose killed Carmen; Humbert kills the bullfighter" (Wood 138). Humbert loved Lolita too much to think of killing her.

The allusions are intellectual, poetic, and calculated to further sculpt the reader’s mind into sympathy. Humbert can not help but express his feelings in terms of other literary characters, and it is partly this that makes his story all the more elegiac. Literature often sets standards, and Humbert is bringing himself to these same standards with his allusions. The sorrow we feel for the narrator in Poe’ "Annabel Lee" is channeled into sorrow for Humbert when he makes this covert comparisons.

It is important to remember that Humbert is retelling his account form prison, not living these events for the first time. Therefore, Humbert can foreshadow events that are about to happen. He does indeed do so, to aid the astute reader in guessing the identity of Lolita’s kidnapper. Humbert does not immediately divulge the kidnapper’s identity, so as to reward the reader who has been paying attention. Many clues are revealed along the way, and the reader feels an intellectual satisfaction when recognizing that an obscure hint has been dropped.

Before either she or Humbert meets Clare Quilty, Lolita spends a summer at Camp Q (Wood 119). Humbert cooks up an Aunt Clare "as part of the ordinary family life he plans not to have" (Wood 119), which he could not have had, partially because of Clare. Mona Dahl wrote a letter to Lolita with a French sentence embedded in it, comprising solely of "qu’il ty." Lolita tells her stepfather that "she is not a lady and does not like lightning," a reference to Quilty’s The Lady who Loved Lightning (Wood 124).

Being able to recognize the foreshadowing is so rewarding that the reader prides him or herself on his or her sharpness, but the "sharpness" unwittingly gives way to further impressionability. So caught up in hints and clues, Humbert’s audience displaces thoughts of his pedophilia for thoughts of riddle-hunting. Humbert’s sins are just as good forgotten as they are forgiven. Either way, Humbert has eluded admonishment from the reader.

There are just some moments when all the games Humbert could fathom wouldn’t save himself from condemnation. It is these times that Humbert must rely on his sheet mastery of English to save him. His dexterity is apparent right form the very start, when "[t]he novel opens with Humbert trilling Lolita’s name for a paragraph in a parody of incantatory or enchanted romance language and proceeds through a dazzling panorama of wordplay . . ." (Rivers and Nicol 183). It is in the explicit scenes that invite denunciation that it is the most critical for Humbert to present himself in the best light that his adroit tongue can. During the explicit scenes, Humbert carefully chooses words which render a more romantic, less pornographic situation. When Humbert is relating his sexual diversions with Annabel as a youth, he starts with an alliterative portrayal of her legs, making Annabel the focus of the scene, whereas a pornographer would have talked more at length about the actual act, making Humbert the main character (Couturier 1). In the same scene:

"his [Nabokov’s] writing unambiguously seeks to transmute Humbert’s erotic experience into a work of art, and to induce us to relive it intensely in our imagination and in our senses. He does not want us simply to identify with his protagonist as a crude pornographer would, but to bring us to adhere totally to this beautiful text in which the gradual eroticization [sic] of the language eventually creates a[n] . . . ecstasy" (Couturier 1).

Nabokov challenges his audience to exercise their mental dexterity, much like Humbert does when he employs allusions and foreshadowing. Since is it Nabokov who is ultimately writing Lolita, it would be sensible to examine the ways in which Nabokov channels our energy away from hating his "protagonist." This is surely a difficult task when one’s "protagonist" is a pedophilic murderer, so he uses one of the same techniques that Humbert does: bring the focus from the crime to the language and make the audience forget.

Nabokov has a "combinational art" (Wood 124) that brings about some symbolism in "The Enchanted Hunters." It is not only the name of Lolita’s school play, but it is also the name of the hotel where Humbert and Lolita spent their first night together. Humbert even sadly notes the coincidence. But there is a third facet to this name, as "the enchanted hunters" resonates with the "bewitched travelers" that Humbert speaks of in his description of a nymphet (Wood 124). Humbert, then, is an enchanted hunter.

Word play is another diversionary tactic. The name "Vivian Darkbloom" appears infrequently as a playwright; it is also anagrammatic of "Vladimir Nabokov." There are also several occurrences of "shadowy" names, including John Ray, Jr., the author of the Foreword; Vanessa Van Ness, Annabel Leigh’s mother; and naturally, Humbert Humbert himself.

What does this all mean? It’s all simply language at it’s finest, as a challenging puzzle, and as a literary masterpiece. Neither Nabokov nor Humbert speak English as their native tongue, but they so nimbly and forcefully use the language that Humbert’s pedophilia is either nearly forgotten or dismissed. The beautiful language creates a world which we are forced to view through Humbert’s eyes. We view his sexual acts in the same amorous light that he does, rather in the pornographic light that society dictates we should. We become so caught up in the games and intricacies and details of his life that we forget about the bigger picture: pedophilia. We find ourselves examining red herring like Humbert does when he notes the correlation in "the enchanted hunters," and just as in real life, these false clues may lead to a dead end and mean nothing at all. Nabokov brings us so close to Humbert’s life that it is alarming to put the book down and feel pity for Humbert when Lolita runs away, then realize that we felt pity when we should have felt vengeance.

Works Cited

Couturier, Maurice. "The Poerotic Novel: Nabokov's Lolita and Ada." 27 Jan. 2002. <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/coutur1.htm>

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York: Vintage, 1955.

Rivers, J.E., Charles Nicol. Nabokov's Fifth Arc: Nabokov and Others on his Life's Work. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.

Wood, Michael. The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Poe, Edgar Allen. "Edgar Allen Poe - The Academy of American Poets." 16 Mar. 2002. <http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=2212>

Eliot, T.S. "Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot." 16 Mar. 2002. <http://web.mit.edu/ashah/www/ashwed.html>