Going back through the beginning of part two, I looked for emotional connections between Humbert and Lolita. Humbert discusses how he must beg, bribe and flatter her so that he can make his physical connection with her. Humbert seems to fully understand that he is dealing with a child, calling her a "disgustingly conventional little girl." He takes both roles as the manipulative pedophile and the uninterested and lacking father figure. Under his unending lust for Lolita, he can't stand her continual whining and self-centered attitude towards life quoting, "Charlotte, I began to understand you!" He painstakingly drops down to her cognitive level and talks to her like a teenager to manipulate her feelings towards him, which he says is painful to speak in "Lo's tongue." He even threatens her about what her situation would be if she were to turn him in. Lolita becomes clever though in understanding what her body means to Humbert and makes him compromise with her, so that she can get what she wants. The text also describes that Lolita has become indifferent to there sexual activity, which as I write this is probably one of the most chilling lines I have read in the story; "There she would be, a typical kid picking her nose while engrossed in the lighter sections of the newspaper, as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon, a shoe, a doll, the handle of a tennis racket, and was too indolent to remove." (wow)
His understanding of her elevating sexual prowess among the boys and men that they meet is also very comical. He will notice (or imagine) another person looking at his Lolita and then comment in his head like ya, I kissed her five minutes after that. Lolita's ability to still function so well in the social world is amazing to me. She almost seems to use her relationship as a tool to help her talk to people. Anyhow, Humbert's and Lolita's relationship is completely based on manipulation and compromise.
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