Lolita Discussion

I have just finished reading Lolita, and I have a question to ask: Was Humbert still in love with Dolores when he found her pregnant with a baby and past the age of a nymphet?

I thought that he would find her repulsive, but instead he started crying and begging her to come with him. He even wished her a happy life in the last paragraph of the novel, even though he was well aware that she was not a nymphet anymore.

This makes me think that he was a good guy at heart and that he was in love with Dolores for the person she is, and not because he was some sick hebephile.

He even went further to show his true love to her by writing her into literature in order to make her “live in the minds of later generations.” Humbert is really a beautiful character, and his last paragraph was touching. I could feel the tears in his eyes while he was writing the ending.

:’)

It was true love desu.

>he was a good guy at heart

Did you not read the rest of the book?

who cares about nabokovs boring prose

> dude a monkey in a cage inspired me to write a book about pedophilia

yeah...right...

All that is according to HH, a notoriously unreliable narrator. Also, remember he waited until Lo was dead before letting it be published (so there is no one to discredit him).

Also, who is that old hag in that picture, Charlotte haze?

>Humbert is really a beautiful character, and his last paragraph was touching. I could feel the tears in his eyes while he was writing the ending.

kys, emma bovary

He only "loved" her too much user. Humbert was the romeo to a someone elses juliet.

He was a good boy

>Was Humbert still in love with Dolores when he found her pregnant with a baby and past the age of a nymphet?

He says he was. Not sure what you want to make of that.

>This makes me think that he was a good guy at heart and that he was in love with Dolores

Everybody is a good guy at heart, doesn't excuse them for what they've done.

He may have really loved her, who knows? His definition of love definitely wouldn't be what every one else thinks it is. But in his fucked up way, sure. Not sure what you can make of that, though.

>He even went further to show his true love to her by writing her into literature in order to make her “live in the minds of later generations.”

More like wrote a fictional story in an attempt to make himself look less like the monster he is.

>All that is according to HH, a notoriously unreliable narrator.

Well, does that mean Humbert isn't genuine about his feelings towards Dolores? How unreliable is he?

>Everybody is a good guy at heart
no, some people are truly sick at heart

>Was Humbert still in love with Dolores when he found her pregnant with a baby and past the age of a nymphet?

He longed for her when he had her. She would never be that. He was not asking Dolores to come with him, he was asking for Lolita back.

Nah, everybody thinks they're the hero at the moment.

What about Iago

This

It's a book about an obsessive man and his attempts to hide this with beautiful language and fancy fantasies. He bribes and he forces her to do things, sometimes even tricking himself into somewhat thinking let her experience and do things for her own benefit/happiness when in actuallity it is given for him to continue experience his own perversion and to avoid being detected.

He willingness to murder and trick to continue this life and his utter disregard of the real mental state of Lolita, for example she crying everynight as soon as Humbert pretends to be asleep.

I wouldn't call him a good man, or even the good guy in the story.


But then again i'm not done with the book yet.

It's a fucking good book though and i'm a total pleb who basically just started reading books so I might be missing out a bunch.

And yeah Lolita is also somewhat deranged, whether or not she was before she met Humbert is somewhat unclear. He imagines Lola was this Lolita before she ever met Humbert but that might just be all in his own head, in a way to justify his actions.

>i'm not done with the book yet
Dolores dies.

Never visit a thread about a book you haven't finished.

Can confirm humbert died too

It was all for love and I totally didn't kill her, she just wants to start a new life and not be found ;^)

>"I think you tore something inside me"
>diamonds

It's up to the reader to decide. But there are a few places where it is obvious he is lying. Such as his story about his first nymphet he lost when he was young.

How is it obvious he's lying about that?

He said the girls name was Annabel and he met her at a "princedom by the sea".
Now, if you compare that to Poe's poem Annabel Lee, you will see many similarities. The girls name, the poem repeats the phrase "kingdom by the sea", Poe was also a famous hebephile, etc.
It seems obvious, to me at least, that he made the story up based on the poem.

I always saw that as him romanticizing something that actually happened to him, like the rest of the book. He had a crush on a girl who died, so of course to Humbert she'd be Annabel Lee, because that's the romantic thing he can think of, and to us it's sort of a cliche.

It is interesting how he introduces that story, because he's talking about Lolita and says, "Was there a precursor?" to transition into talking about Annabel. It's definite he's using Annabel as somewhat of an excuse for his actions, attempting to make his audience sympathize with him; however, it also presents this idea of Lo as an echo of some past childish love for Humbert which to me seems to be at least slightly honest. Things like his fantasy of breeding Lo and then breeding her children might be things even he feels slightly bad about. You can take the angle that Nabokov always refers to Freud as a hack, and therefore Humbert is actually just a sick fuck making a series of complex excuses, but I always thought Humbert's use of cliches made it almost more honest, like a struggle of Humbert's to be genuine and romantic when he can't.

That's the beauty of the book, you can never tell for sure what's real and what's made up. Or more likely which shade of gray it is between the two.
I think that story is just Hum making excuses for his depravity. Like its not his fault, he had a life changing experience as a child. But who didn't have a crush that felt stronger than anything they felt before when they were 12? And most people didn't turn into a pervert because of it.

what about him?

Of course it's possible that the story is a true or a romanticized version of truth, but every time I read the book I trust Humbert less and less.

That's not why it's obvious he's lying you autist. He's just making a reference.

Could be. I think he's lying though, or at least exaggerating for his own benefit.

Humbert did nothing wrong.

No, wait, let me correct that. The only wrong thing Humbert did was when he left his legal loli. Rita a best. Other than that, Humbert did nothing wrong.