Lolita Close Reading

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.” p.1 This quote from Humbert in the beginning of the novel shows a lot of things about his viewpoint. First of all you can tell by how he describes Lolita that while it is messed up how he thinks of her since she is so young he clearly does not have ill will towards her and his actions later in the novel are misguided, but not evil. This is clearly since in the points where he describes Lolita you can tell that he has genuine attraction to her. The author brilliantly has Humbert describe very specific about Lolita like her height and all of her names which is the type of things you would expect someone who is truly infatuated with another to say. You can see where he states, "there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child" that he believes it was his past and the scars from it that attract him to adolescent females. I am not trying to justify or question his actions one way or another, but it is interesting to see how he thinks throughout the story because of his very unusual perspective.