I totally hate this book; it’s so complicated to read. The little that I understood was that the narrator was raised by his father and that his mother had died suddenly and he describes this traumatic event with only two words: “picnic, lightning”. It gets more interesting when he met Annabel. Though they are just friends at the beginning, their friendship soon changes into passionate, adolescent love. It’s awkward because they never manage to consummate their “love”, and four months late she dies. I think Humbert started liking young girls because Annabel. He also says that he was only to able to break free of Annabel’s spell when he met Lolita. He tells the reader that he was only able to break free of Annabel’s spell when he met Lolita, more than twenty years later. I like when Humbert used Greek, Jewish, Latin mythology terms, like eve, Lilith, and nymphet, which is a girl between the ages of nine and fourteen(according to Humbert). He’s sexually attracted to this type of prostitutes. Then he gets married to Valeria, he chooses Valeria because of her childlike nature.

After reading these first few pages a couple times, I think I might like this book for a while. It started off by introducing to us the main character’s childhood and his past. This is good because it helps me, the reader, to get to know the character that I am following throughout the story, and I get to learn about who I’m dealing with.

Throughout the pages that I have read, I have learned that the main character has had love interest in young girls, which he calls “nymphets”. In my mind I thought he was just being a pedophile, which may be true, but by the end of the reading, we found out that he was insane. I guess this can excuse his pedophile-like behavior. I also think that this is forshadowing as he does acknowledge the fact that he is insane. He said (on p:34) the “The reader will regret to learn that soon after my return to civilization I had another bout with insanity…” This makes me more interested in the story because insane characters tend to be unpredictable, and this would be able to keep my attention as the story play out with a pedophile for a main character.

In the novel narrator seem to have an obsession with young girl. Through out the novel the narrator keep calling them nymphets. In the fist part of the novel the narrator flashback to his childhood sweetheart and begin to tell why the narrator is obsess with young girl. The narrator try very hard to break away for his childhood sweetheart but have a hard time doing so. When the narrator  try to so do something comes to his mind and her remember Annabel.  “Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distantly today than I did few year ago before Lolita”(11). The narrator give a caparison between Lolita and Annabel on how they look alike. Annabel look and her death, the narrator never got over them. By seeing Lolita brought back memory  of Annabel for the narrator causing the narrator to become more obsess.  “I leaf again and again through these memories and keep asking myself”(4). The narrator felt that her was rob of a adolescent romance. The narrator think about these memory because he think that he and Annabel were meant to be together. The narrator that about what he could have done to send more time with Annabel. He also say that he blames Annabel for his obsession with nymphets. His obsession is so overwhelming, eve though he is marry he couldn’t stoping thinking about nymphets. The narrator spend most of this his sitting in the part and look a nymphets. The narrator character is describe as some one who keep to him-self and keep thinking about his old memory.

This is one of those books that you have to take your time reading it very slowly and sometimes a paragraph more than once. Luckily, the plot is interesting enough that you don’t get very bored reading it.

The fact that the narrator acknowledges the fact that he is sick but doesn’t stop lusting after the little girls is the biggest paradox to me. “…was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity?”(13) He knows that it is wrong and just wont stop. I believe his sickness ranges to different things. He speaks about his exploits and conquests with such regularity its eerie. He tells his twisted stories and then ends with things like “…by the time of my arrest.”(16) As if getting arrested isnt an extremely significant action. He tells the story as if it is someone else going through it and he is completely unaffected emotionally and perhaps he is.

Another thing I find interesting is the subject of Humbert. I believe Humbert is his sickness personified, not actually the narrator himself because he always speaks about him in third person or how the narrator describes himself when the sickness takes over. “Humbert Humbert tried hard to be good.Really and truly he did.”(19) I could be completely wrong but this blog is supposed to be what I think right?

I enjoy the fact that the book’s setting is in Paris, but the fact that many sentences are in actual French makes it hard to read. But since I read it with a translator next to me and having to figure those out made the book more fun to read.

To understand a book you must read from cover to cover said to me a professor once, and so I did when I opened Lolita’s front cover.  Foreword is the introduction with a short explanation of the who and what of the story.  This gives the reader a better sense of what the show is going to present next.  John Ray Jr, PH.D is a fictional character who is in charge of editing a manuscript whose author died in jail before his trial. In his will he asked for his lawyer to make possible the publication of “Lolita or the confession of a White Widowed Male” (P3) only after his death.  John admits that there is not much change to be made and that the text should be left untouched to maintain the author’s originality. John does not say why the author was in jail, but tells that “Humbert” (P3) was a pedophile.  Even though his writing is horrific John says that it is beautiful and persuasive and anticipates that the script will become popular and will give parents advice on how to be more vigilant about the future of their children.

The name Lolita is the first word of this story which represents something important to the author in this case Humbert, the narrator and main character plays around with her name. He admits that Lolita was not his first pedophilic experience and that he was a murderer. He describes his childhood as being healthy and happy and about his European background.  His family appeared to be of means, his father is absent most of the time and there is not much description about his mother only that she died in an accident “picnic, lightning”(#2) this expression represent how distant he was from his mother, and also how  he dislike the figure of an adult female. His aunt Sybil from the mother side of the family is the one who cares for him after her sister passed. He likes her despite her tough attitude and rules. This is another important fact about his youth. The presence of female figure are predominant more than the male figure for instances this could also be another reason of his behavior later on in the story.

Annabela Leigh a twelve-year-old girl appeared in the story on the summer of 1923. Humbert and Annabel were only friends at first then their friendship turned into juvenile love. Their adventures to have sex are numerous, but they never consume their love. Sadly few months later she died of typhus. He is traumatized after this event and this leads to a severe changes in his behavior towards his adulthood. He admits that “Lolita began with Annabel” (#4). Annabel memories follow him for more than twenty years later until he finally let go of her when he met Lolita.

Humbert talks about adult female admirers, but he dislike most of them. He questions society and in an indirect way makes the reader also question the laws and traditions when he believes that it is biased that an adult man can love a girl of seventeen but not one of twelve. This ideas are so bizarre and typically of a person with mental problem. A nymphet is how he calls a girl between the ages of nine and fourteen, he describes them as not necessarily beautiful but with a essential sexually quality.

He marries Valeria because she acts like a child and his obsession with nymphets worries him and he wants to live as a normal man. His marriage fails, again because his true nature forced him to dislike adult women, and also Valeria’s affair with the taxi driver. This situation showed some of Humbert hidden characteristics. Mental hospital are normal places according to his description, he goes in and out figuring that his illness is cure. After some time he finally arrives in the States to face again his twisted sad reality.

The story started out interesting enough for me to continue reading but it was difficult for me to understand it. When i did try to figure it out I picked out pieces of the story that stood out to me and try to piece them together. His listing of several females names was one as seen on (page 9.) The fact that he said he was a murderer and mentions of jury at first led me to think that it was a murder case that he was describing. But while reading there were mentions of Humbert  fornicating with these females made it even more confusing to me. on page 12 he described what I think is a moment of bliss with Annabel  who subsequently dies but not at the hands of Humbert but died of typhus that made it even harder for me to find a real concept of where the book is going.  Also the fact that his mind was full of so much lust after just describing yourself as a murderer made me question if Humbert was ill or it was just the his imagination going wild. On page 18 though it described how psychoanalysts wooed him with pseudoliberations of pseudolibidoes. I thought of this as a fake type of freedom within himself as a result of all those thoughts he was having. It was all over the place and really hard for me to interpret but reading through it thats how I interpreted it. Hopefully as i get into the book I’ll get a clearer understanding of what’s going on cause it seems an interesting read.