Lolita – by Vladimir Nabokov

Struggle for identity: sexuality, culture European/American, mental illness, growing up

Plot Summary – divided into two sections and has 69 chapters. It is narrated by Humbert
Humbert from his prison cell. He has an obsession with young girls whom he calls nymphets.
He blames this obse|ssion on the death of his childhood sweetheart Annabel. He has an
unsuccessful marriage to Valeria which leads him to rent a room with Charlotte Haze, a
widow. He meets her 12 year old daughter Lolita whom he becomes infatuated with. When
charlotte reads Humberts diary she runs across a road in shock and is killed by a passing car.
Humbert picks up Lolita from summer camp and takes her to hotels across America. He
gives her sleeping pills so he can molest her without her knowledge but she initiates the sex.
He discovers that she slept with another boy at summer camp. Eventually they settle down in
New England town where Lolita is enrolled in school. He is extremely protective over her
and only lets her take part in a school play, directed by Clare Quilty. Before the opening night
Lolita and HH have an argument and Lolita says how she wants to return to the road. HH
becomes paranoid about a following car. Lolita falls ill and for the first time in years HH is
forced to spend the night away from her. One night Lolita disappears from the hospital and
HH is told how an Uncle checked her out. When Lolita turns 17 HH receives a letter from her
telling him that she is married, pregnant and in desperate need of money. HH agrees to give
her money in exchange for the name of her abductor. He discovers that acquaintance of
Charlottes and director of the school play, Clare Quilty, abductor her and attempted to make
her a star in one of his pornographic films. When she refused he threw her out. She then
worked odd jobs to earn some money until meeting her husband who knows nothing of her
past. HH asks Lolita to leave her husband and go away with him. She refuses and he breaks
down in tears. In revenge he kills Quilty at his mansion. He is then arrested for driving on
the wrong side of the road. He states how the novel may only be published after he and Lolita
have died.

Quotations;

But in my arms she was always Lolita

Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer

The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain
incomprehendable to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard brained youngsters of today

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that
our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy,
enormous country, that, by then, in retrospect, was no more than a collection of dog-eared
maps, ruined tour books, old tires and her sobs in the night—every night, every night—the
moment I feigned sleep.

Sex is but the ancilla of art