Humbert Turns to Prey

During the last part of the first half in Lolita, Humbert’s tone changes. He become the offender--a hunter after his prey. After Charlotte's death and before he finds out Lolita isn't as pure as he thought she was, he analyzes the cultural changes on the concept of "the child" humans have had throughout history, while fitting an inner battle of wanting to maintain Lolita's purity. "I was still firmly resolved to pursue my policy of sparing her purity by operating only in the stealth of night, only upon a completely anesthetized little nude" (Lolita, 124). By maintaining Lolita's purity, Humbert really wants to fulfill his needs without Lolita knowing (by use of drugs) he is going to harm her, while also accusing her evil to have sucked him into wanting her.  

While Humbert is trying to justify is actions, he talks about the cultural change of children's role in society. "We are not surrounded in our enlighted era by little slave flowers that can be casually plucked between business and bath as they used to be in the days of the Romans; and we do not, as dignified Orientals did in still more luxurious times, use tiny entertainers fore and aft between the mutton and rose sherbet" (Lolita, 124). The phrase "casually plucked" seems to stick out. Everything about what he has done thus far hasn't been casual, but very planned and thought out to ensure his ultimate satisfaction. He hasn't been worried about anyone but himself, and maintaining his ability to get close to his nymphet. Humbert is constantly under the impression that the way he sees things is right, which follows the individualistic thought that most westerners practice, and if this used to be acceptable, they should be acceptable now. People like him used to be culturally acceptable, so why shouldn't they be acceptable now. Now they are criminals, which seems unfair to him when he is so close to his, so called, prey. However, right after this, he talks about how little he knows of children. "Despite my having dabbled in psychiatry and social work, I really knew very little about children" (Lolita, 124). Lines down from him trying to justify his actions, he talks about how little he knows. From this point on, there are times Humbert seems to confuse his acts of justification with psychoanalytic jargon. But, it also goes with the constant battle in his head about what he is doing. He knows what he is doing now is wrong and it might hurt her, but it's what he wants. "The child therapist in me (a fake, as most of them are--but no matter) regurgitated neo-Freudian hash and conjured up a dreaming and exaggerating Dolly in the "latency" period of girlhood. Finally, the sensualist in me (a great and insane monster) had no objection to some depravity in his prey" (Lolita, 124). 

Finally, he tries to justify his actions by talking about how Annabel and Lolita were actually not the same in their innocence. Even though Humbert saw Annabel in Lolita, they were very different. Here, the unwritten bad psychoanalyst would say that Humbert was always looking for Annabel until he found something similar, which is why he was attracted to little girls and never satisfied with "older" women, and he was unsatisfied when Lolita wasn't just like Annabel; in turn, he constructed Lolita as best as he could to make her similar to Annabel. "I should have understood that Lolita had already proved to be something quite different from innocent Annabel, and that the nymphean evil breathing through every pore of that fey child" (Lolita, 125). Even though Humbert tried hard to be unaffected by Lolita's charm, he was sucked into her being. Somehow, his lust for her was because of how she was. He had an image of what he wanted in his prey, and she fit it rather well. Lolita in this passage turns into a figure of a demon and Humbert is her prey. The irony that runs through Nabokov's writing is most blatant in this passage. 

The real beauty

"I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world. The trouble was that those gentlemen had not, and I had, caught glimpses of an
incomparably more poignant bliss. The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine. My world was split. I was aware of not one but two sexes, neither of which was mine; both would be termed female by the anatomist. But to me, through the prism of my senses, "they were as different as mist and mast." (Page 18)

Through most of my post, I have honed in on the idea of the psychoanalyst character who seems to constantly be in the novel. At some points, though, it seems as if Humbert is trying to psychoanalyze himself. Today in class we talk about the idea of hating something so much you really explore the idea. This may be an explanation to Nabokov's obsession of hating Freud, but I think there is more to it. I think by making fun of the psychodynamic therapy, Nabokov is making fun of the reader and making the character in a way that he thinks people will want to read. This novel is starting to feel like a detective novel, but a satirical one. The reader has to believe everything Humbert says to be true, but how do we know what he is saying to be true. Nabokov makes fun of a lot of things in the novel, like Poe's poem and Freud, so how do we know he is even telling us the truth about Humbert? However, I do think it's interesting how at some points Humbert turns into his own therapist and he starts to justify his actions to the jury. In the passage above, it seems to be a good example of this. 

"I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world." He starts out by saying the sex he has with nymphets is the same as two grown adults having sex together. "Routine rhythm which shakes the world" is a slight jab at the fact that people are over sexualized, even though he sexualizes Lolita. In some respects, he is also saying that all sex is the same, which seems to be an over justification. No sex is bad sex just seems like an excuse to have whatever type of sex you want to have, which makes him seem like his own therapist. He's had "normal" sex and it hasn't worked, but the sex he has with nymphets does work; it's essentially the same thing, right?

"The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine" At times, Humbert has an inflated sense of self. He thinks that the way he does things and knows things is the right and best way. He now says that he knows the most fantastic way to have sex, and without having it the way he does, it is unimaginable. It's an odd way to think about sex and completely goes again his justification for wanting to have sex with nymphets. He says that "normal sex" is wrong because they don't know the real beauty of it, but others, the ones he is trying to convince, say his sex is wrong.   

"My world was split. I was aware of not one but two sexes, neither of which was mine; both would be termed female by the anatomist. But to me, through the prism of my senses, "they were as different as mist and mast." This sentence really pushes his justification. He says that he sees two different types of women: the old and the young, and he only wants the young. He's tried to the old, he keeps letting the reader know that, but he isn't satisfied with the experience. The are anatomically the same, but the way one makes him feel, which seems to be powerful, is the only one he wants. He needs the innocent to need him. When they need him he feels power, which is part of his sexual craving. Even though he is told it's socially wrong, he feels like it's what is right for him. He knows the real beauty. 

The Psychoanalyst

Throughout Lolita, there is an unexplained extra character: the satirical psychoanalysis. Sometimes, however, Humbert will relay his thoughts, feelings and experiences as if he had been talking to a psychoanalyst. As Nabokov says, and is explicitly shown throughout the introduction, Nabokov hates Freud and psychoanalytical explanations. So, one can only perceive that Nabokov is doing this in a sarcastic way. Nabokov is the type of author who wants to push his readers, as he plays “games” with them, but he will also make fun of something he doesn’t like in such a sly way that it makes the reader almost think he likes it. However, the reader has to know how to read his works to understand the games he is playing. In the following passages, it is easy to see that there is a “satirical psychoanalysis” character. It’s present, but humorous.

1. “The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car. In my sanitary relations with women I was practical, ironical and brisk. While a college student, in London and Paris, paid ladies sufficed me. My studies were meticulous and intense, although no particularly fruitful. At first, I planned to take a degree in psychiatry and many manquè talents do; but I was even more manquè than that; a peculiar exhaustion, I am so oppressed, doctor, set in; and I switched to English literature, where so many frustrated poets end as pipe-smoking teachers in tweeds. Paris suited me. I discussed Soviet movies with expatriates. I sat with uranists in the Deux Magots. I published tortuous essays in obscure journals” (Lolita, 15).

In the first sentence, the character is present. Nabokov uses the opportunity to create an extremely vivid scene in place, while also making fun of the psychoanalyst. Based on how he describes the women his father involves himself with earlier in the novel, we know that Humbert doesn’t have a healthy view on women. When he was younger, women would cue over him all the time, which also spread into his adult life. He never really liked them, but did associate himself with them. As this passage progresses, it is easy to see the bad psychoanalyst; he even mentions he was thinking about studying psychiatry and did for a while. Psychology is present throughout the book linked to Humbert, but especially in the form of psychodynamic therapy.

“I leaf again and again through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity? When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination, which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives, and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel” (Lolita, 12-13).

This passage seems to have the character bleeding through. The similarities that are placed between Lolita and Annabel make it easy to suggest that Lolita is taking the place of Annabel. Since Annabel died so suddenly and at such a young age, he got stuck in romanticizing about her. The bad psychoanalyst would say that Humbert lost his mother at young age, so he grew up without a real mother figure, which was replaced by his aunt, who was crazy. After dealing with the affects of these two women, the girl he falls in love with dies when she is fourteen. He is stuck in the mind of a child and still loves the romanticized idea of the fourteen-year-old Annabel, which directly leads to his obsessions with nymphets. The “magic” he refers to is the skewed vision he has pertaining to Annabel.

“I have reserve for the conclusion of my “Annabel” phase the account of our unsuccessful first tryst” (Lolita, 14).

Any time he has a misfortune, he brings his sorrows back to Annabel. He uses her as an excuse as to why he is the way he is. A psychoanalyst would eat this up, so speak, and the reader could construe this by thinking Nabokov wants to psychoanalyze Humbert. Humbert is a very complicated character, and my making a “satirical psychoanalyst” character; Nabokov made his job of showing the reader Humbert an easy one. By making fun of psychoanalyst, Nabokov made the reader understand Humbert deeply and in slightly humorous way. Nabokov never calls Humbert bad or good, but by having Humbert describe himself in the way he does, it makes the character and reader’s relationship stronger.

The Jury

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look a this tangle of thorns" (Lolita, Vldaimir Nabokov, pg 9).

As Nabokov finishes up the first chapter, he addresses the jury, his reader, for the first time formally. By calling the reader “the jury” he is addressing the fact that he is talking about something overly sensitive to many people and most will judge either him or his character—possibly both. It’s not the last time he will address his readership, but it is the start of the trend in the book. Any time an unconventional occurrence is about to happen, the reader is addressed as “the jury.” It’s a way to warn the reader, but as to make a point that the reader will make judgments on the character either fairly or unfairly. In calling his readers the jury, Nabokov is making his reader a character in the book; he is fully immersing the reader in the story. By making the reader a character, it brings the reader in more closely to the story. The readers aren’t just outsiders looking in; they are insiders watching what’s going on firsthand. It’s a nice trick that Nabokov uses to make the reader become closer to the story. When the reader is a character among a character they loathe or find disgusting, it’s much harder to distance oneself from the evil and sin.

By using the word “jury,” the Nabokov is presenting the character and his actions as something that has to be justified. Since the person the character loves is illegal and somewhat intangible, negative feelings and assumptions are made toward all of his actions to the girl.

“Exhibit number one” is the beginning to a rather psychoanalytic approach to justifying his actions. After this point he talks about why he is the way he is, in a way that one would talk to their therapist about their feelings--ironically, and somewhat satirically considering the fact that Nabokov openly hated Freud (fully talked about in the introduction of the book), the father of psychoanalysis.

“What the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied,” refers to the people who don’t understand his love; the real, passionate love he has. They are misinformed by the social assumptions put in place about men who like young girls. These men are assembled to be sick, but he disagrees. They are simple for the same reason that they are misinformed—they just don’t know. “Noble-winged seraphs” talks about the royalty these judgment people think they have. They think they are angelically royal in all they do, but they are jealous of the real love he has for Lo.

“Look at this tangle of thorns” is such a great introduction to the rest of the novel. It’s complicated. Thorns are viewed as destructive and ugly. But thorns hold roses, one of the most beautiful flowers. A tangle of ugly thorns protects the beauty that is true to Humbert; his love is beautiful, as is the object of his love.

To Freud or not to Freud

     John Ray Jr. is the character that’s supposed to make the novel feel less fictional and somehow give the book more validity. He supposedly edits the novel and is one of the first people to look at the novel, so he takes the novel and somewhat interprets the novel for his perspective. He is the cousin of the lawyer who is defending Humbert Humbert for his sex crimes, so he does have a slight bias toward him, but Humbert has died at this point so most of the personal information he gets is either from his cousin or the novel itself.  

     The way John Ray Jr. explains the way Humbert feels and lives makes him seem as much more of a bad person than Humbert describes himself. Humbert tries to justify what he says, sometimes coming off as rather disgusting, but he at least tries to validate his actions. “I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world” (18). However, John Ray says that he is still a sinner and a disgrace—making him ugly. “No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conductive to attractiveness” (5). While I was reading John Ray Jr., I couldn’t help but agree with him. It was easy to see his point of view and agree. But, I felt as if it was a bad place to put such a passage; I didn’t want that coming into the book. I wish I would have read chapters one through ten and then went back to read the Foreword. It somehow offset the book in a way that I didn’t want. It was most definitely strategically placed, but no one I wanted.

      The book takes on a sarcastic tone that seems different from “The Enchanter”. The characters keep explaining why they are the way they are, which isn’t a style Nabokov would generally use. However, it seems as if he is trying to draw in all types of readers to his novel—he wants to controversial while also maintaining a readership. One way he does this is by making the novel feel less of a fiction piece (talking about the trial, other people’s death, the moral and social issues with Humbert’s behavior). By making the book have a nonfiction feeling; the reader can bring in more feeling toward the character and the character’s actions. When the read feels like the character is doing something bad, it’s easier to feel hatred toward a real person (or someone who feels real) than a fiction person who isn’t actually committing the crime.

       In some ways Nabokov approaches this subject matter in a banal way, however, he does seem to do this in a rather satirical way. Nabokov writes in a way that seems to be making fun of other authors in the beginning of “Lolita.” So far, the story doesn’t seem as if it has an incredible different story line from a structured story of someone else. However, I think that something is going to happen to make a change. Nabokov always talks about the game he plays with his reader; it seems as if this maneuver is just a game he is playing. 

      While I was reading the first ten chapters of “Lolita,” I couldn’t help but think that Nabokov sounds like he is talking to Freud. While Humbert was talking about his feelings, it seemed as if Freud was psychoanalyzing him. In the first ten chapters, the reader (thinking from a Psychodynamic perspective) knew exactly why Humbert was the way he was. Freud would say that Humbert was stuck in the Phallic stage, due to his mother’s death at a young age and the first girl he loved died when she was fourteen. Since I know how Nabokov thinks of Frued, which is one of almost hatred, I can to think Nabokov is playing a game—almost a satirical game. I also felt this way about the way Cordelia was described in “The Enchanter,” but it seems to be even more obvious in the way that Humbert describes himself and the way he feels about his situation. He tries to justify his actions constantly, which is a huge aspect of Psychodynamic therapy.

      In reference to his vulgar undertones in the book, I can’t help but think it goes back to somehow spiting Freudian thought. The more vulgar and disturbing the character is, the more likely one will sympathize with him. And, it’s much easier to sympathize with a character when they feel real, which easily explains the foreword and its purpose. I feel that it’s much too hard to answer the why Nabokov is writing the way he is so soon in the book. While reading anything from Nabokov one has to be rather weary in what they take from him. He isn’t a writer who says everything, or maybe anything, just he way it is. It’s always a game—something the reader has to constantly keep in mind.

The idea.

After listening to other comments about Nabokov’s purpose and portrait of the main character in The Enchanter in class, I couldn’t help but constantly go back to the moment the books changes—the moment his wife (the girl’s mother) dies. From this scene on, the character seems to lose control over every aspect of the situation, even his actions toward the girl. When he hears about his wife’s death, he becomes angry, even though his ultimate goal has been made (48). When I first read that scene, I thought it was a rather odd reaction to have; but, as I re-visit the story, I see how it was the turning point to his losing his enchantment toward the girl. As the story progresses, he turns into a very awkward and clumsy character. Before he was awkward, but he could still seem somewhat sociable. After this scene, however, he becomes angry. He yells at the police when they think he is someone he is not (66). The way Nabokov rights the story, it almost seems as if he is going to be caught. Even though they have the wrong person, his speech to the police made him seem as if he is guilty. “Wait for some accusations, gentlemen, wait for somebody to lodge a little complaint!” (66). During this time as well, the little girl was rather cold to him; she wanted to sit next to the driver and refused to sit next to him (62). However, the point at which he seemed to be the angriest was when he thought she had locked him out of their room, even though he merely tried to open the wrong door (68). It seemed odd of him to be so angry with her and the other occupants when he was the one who had made the mistake in the first place.

He looses all control, though, when he violates the little girl. The wording Nabokov uses makes the reader cringe during the scene. The reader, like the character, pushes through the scene… “Onward, onward” (73). The reader wants him to stop, but he doesn’t. His movements aren’t smooth when he is with her, as he had envisioned they would be. He’s clumsy and ends up ruining his entire goal. As soon as his wife dies, the story changes. He is no longer pursuing a goal, but obtaining it. Once he started obtaining the goal, had to push to get it. It was almost as if he didn’t want it (even though he did), but he kept going because he felt like he had to do it. He also seemed as if he didn’t like how it was going—it was much different from what he envisioned it being. It was awkward and his body moved awkwardly along hers. Instead of being a moment he thought he would love and something he wanted; it ended up being a moment he didn’t quite like at all. He didn’t find her as beautiful as when he first saw her (58).

It was strange to see his progression go from something he really wanted, but constantly struggled with and tried to suppress, to something he didn’t want but felt as if he had to finish. He was her prey. He had been hunting her for so long. It was all he wanted, but everything he didn’t.

The Enchanter's Guilt

Throughout “The Enchanter” there was a strong sense of suppression and guilt (between both the characters and the reader) in a deeply eloquent text. Nabokov uses rich and vividly descriptive adjectives for every thought, sight or sound of the Enchanter, but he never labels that character as a pedophile, in contrast to each other character being given an adjective. In a way, it seems as if this tactic was to keep such a negative word out of the vocabulary of the book to ensure a deeper connection between that character and the reader. The reader almost feels sad for him when he first sees Cordelia after being parted for a long period of time and she doesn’t seem to be quite as beautiful to her as she had previously been (58). Even though his actions are seen as socially and morally wrong, he speaks about these infatuations in the most loving way. He even marries and cares for her mother to take ownership of her (29). Only in the end is there a great sense of guilt when he and Cordelia are naked as she sleeps (73). Nabokov makes the reader almost want it to work out between the two characters, but in the final scene the reader feels guilty for wanting The Enchanter to be able to love such a young and innocent child. As soon as Nabokov describes the girl’s small body as The Enchanter sees and feels her (70-71), pure disgust and guilt boil up inside the reader.

The sense of suppression was only felt in The Enchanter, himself. He describes his suppression as well as Nabokov. Even in the beginning he talks about his suppression, for he was “seeking justification for [his] guilt” (6). His desires made him awkward and he wasn’t very good at talking to people, but for some reason, people liked to talk to him. In the park, the knitter talked to him without him responding much (10).  He also felt as if he would get caught from his awkwardness. If he would have been a smooth fellow, he could have gotten Cordelia in his lap while they were in the park talking together and no one would have seen it as a strange thing (12).  He was so capable of suppressing his urges he knew when he had to run from his desire, especially when he was in the park (10). His suppression and guilt are the two driving forces that pull the story along. He tries not to fall in love with Cordelia, but it just sort of happens and there isn’t much he can do about it, except to be an influential person in her life. His suppression soon boils over when he, as he had planned, got her alone with him. After a long period of time, he had suppressed his urges enough and could finally do as he pleased with her. The final scene between the two is awkward and hard to read, but it’s one that must be read because the reader wants to know if he deflowers her and gets what he wants, or fails. He does get close to his goals, disgustingly close, but inevitably fails. Even the wording becomes awkward in this scene, especially when Nabokov describes his genitals as “his magic wand” (73). He could no longer suppress what he knew was wrong, so he ran away in guilt.

“The Enchanter” is beautifully written, but it comes with a strange guilt. It’s not something one would want to deal with or go through, so it’s uncomfortable. However, it’s a story of love, which is something most humans are drawn to read. In the end, one does feel disgustingly guilty about connecting with The Enchanter, but the end is somewhat satisfying.