4. Is Lolita Really About Duelling Paedophiles?
Superficially, Lolita tells the sordid tale of the neurotic Humbert Humbert competing with his sinister rival, Clare Quilty, for the possession of twelve year-old Dolores Haze. A deeper reading suggests that Lolita is actually about its authors, Vladimir Nabokovs, misgivings about becoming an active part of New World culture. Being ousted from his station as a young Russian nobleman by the Bolshevik Revolution and forced to live in exile led Nabokov to be introduced to the vastly different artistic concerns, aesthetic styles, and cultural norms of England, Germany, and later, the U.S.A. But it was also a traumatic upheaval which involved his father being killed in a botched assassination gambit. No doubt this new world looked fresh and new to Nabokov, and in that sense seductive. However, he couldnt help but yearn for the life from which he was forced. This tension forms the basis of Lolita, the titular character, Dolores Haze representing the atmospheric murk of New World culture. Humbert Humbert, at once a dual and yet divided man, represents two-thirds of Nabokovs psychethe parts which long for the old, see the appeal of the new, but feel vexed by the prospect of having the two worlds come together. Humberts nemesis, Clare Quilty (who wishes to exploit Miss Haze through pornographic films) represents the third part of Nabokovthe concern that he can do nothing but prostitute himself in this New World; exploit it for profit, but exist, ultimately, without finding any deeper meaning, and like Humbert, die of a broken heart.