Hummbert Quotes

explaining himself: “I insist upon proving that I am not, and never was, and never could be, a brutal scoundrel” (Nabokov: “Lolita” 131) At first he even tries to supress his feelings towards Lolita and he hesitates before sexually abusing her. Furthermore, he tries to find excuses for himself, for example while claiming his intentions were different or that there were instances in which he did not act according to his sick passions. He is“ a paedophile with charm, wit, intelligence” (Whiting 834) and his charming attitude put together with his high status as well as being a well-read and articulate professor make his lie about being Lo’s father more believable to people from Humbert’s surroundings such as teachers or Lolita’s friends’ parents.

“By rendering the paedophile different in kind from regular people, ostensibly offering an explanation of him and his behaviour, the laws made the paedophile monstrous” (Whiting 857), but they are not always equal or as monstrous as we would like them to be. We would rather they were old and scary, which is why deceitful and wicked Humbert may not seem as scary in our eyes. “Lolita is a novel that couples child molestation with resplendent language which problematizes the reader’s response by coercing us into empathy with its vile anti-hero and narrator Humbert Humbert” (Rodgers 105). Being human means seeing humanity in other people and acknowledging their sorrow, which is why our feelings towards Humbert are not only those of hate, repugnance and anger, but also those of pity and compassion: “Nabokov does intend us to identify with a protagonist to a certain degree, to accept him as a human being, while at the same time strongly to condemn his deeds” (Nomi Tamir-Ghez 18). That is why it is easy to give into Humbert’s apologetic tone that justify or at least understand his actions. He asks us to understand his tragic story, to pity him and perhaps to sympathize with

No matter how charming and well-educated Humbert is and how many serious mental issues might be found in Hermann, it is not how they are, but who they are that we remember about their characters. “Nabokov gives us more than enough material to understand and pity Dolores’s suffering, so the text cannot be said to advocate or justify Humbert’s acts” (Rodgers 113). Humbert is not capable of defending himself as his gruesome act of raping a child is what determines our thoughts about him as a human being. Sometimes Humbert’s confessions make us uncomfortable, for example when he mentions being intimate with her while underlining the fact that she is a child: “This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning” (Nabokov, “Lolita” 140) If we get caught in the trap of Humbert’s endearing story, though, we might then allow ourselves to think in a way Humbert would like us to think and to perhaps be outsmarted by him: “If readers laugh with Humbert, they are forced also either to laugh at themselves or to abandon moral discernment altogether, albeit temporarily” (Rodgers 115). If a reader gets too involved in Humbert’s story, then the chances are he will also lose his sense of morality or at least would adjust it to Humbert’s understanding of morality or the lack of