Saturday, November 7, 2009

HH realizing that he is dealing with a little girl

Knowing that HH is respectively an intelligent man it is hard to imagine that he is deeply psychologically fascinated with Lolita. Even though physical attraction is an important part of a relationship, these two rascals are riding around with each other all across the country; it seems that HH would finally tire of the incessant bantering of an adolescent girl. Throughout the first part of the novel I began to question HH’s intelligence, figuring that he must just be taking the reader for a ride, as if he was the Humphrey Bogart of rain men. (I always pictured him looking and speaking like Humphrey Bogart while I was reading the novel) But, finally in the beginning of the second part of the novel after HH had finally overtaken his nymphet the story starts to shift into what I would consider a very realistic situation between a middle aged man and a young girl.

It seemed obvious finally that HH only needed Lo to indulge his sexual desires. When their road quest got on its way HH finally started to recognize what he had gotten himself into and the emotional trauma that would commence. “I was really not quite prepared for the fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement… kind of diffused clowning… I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl.” It was really funny when he began to see the role that her mother had played, when he first began to look at her, and the barrier she provided which made it easier for him to flirt and play with Lolita without having to have any real conversation or make any important decisions about what Lo needed to do in her life. “Charlotte, I began to understand you!” HH, after finding that threatening her was not always the best course of action would began to talk at her level which “the reader will notice what pains I took to speak Lo’s tongue” so that he could get her down the road and into the next Kumfy Kabin.

One of the darker parts of this section is when he begins to realize that Lolita may decide to tell someone else about what is going on and how she might be able to manipulate him through this idea. Knowing that she is too stubborn to threaten physically and also knowing that she did not have a full understanding of the implications of what was happening, he would tell her that she would be orphaned and all of the luxuries that she acquires with him would be stripped away and she would be a ward of the state. The psychological trauma that develops through this part of the novel will have a significant impact on how Humbert feels about Lolita’s situation at the end of the novel. This stealing of her youth becomes the main tragedy in Humber’s mind when he loses her.

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