Lolita Responding and Reflecting

Prathik Vemulapalli

Responding and Reflecting

Lolita has opened my mind to many new ideas and has caused me too question my own beliefs in many ways. While I will never believe Humbert's decisions were right I now understand where he is coming from and that the situation itself cannot be painted in black and white or right and wrong. For example while many would say right off that Humbert is a bad person it seems that it was more of his mental issues that caused this as opposed to his character. Humbert states at one point, “I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.” This quote shows that while his judgement was wrong and he should be held accountable for what he did his intentions were genuine, but selfish. Obviously his actions were wrong and hurt her, but the book showed me situations like this have to be looked at more deeply than just saying he was wrong since it seemed like his childhood trauma almost caused him to not mature mentally in some ways. In the end I still agree with how society is so extremely against this because it can scar the children for their whole lives, but in certain situations like this we must look at everything before making judgments. A moral I learned from this story was that you need to get rid of your personal biases and deeply analyze a situation before making a decision no matter how obvious the answer seems.