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.