Lolita pg. 109-140

When Humbert picks Lolita up from camp and see’s her for the first time, we are given a glimpse of hope that he would do the right thing when he says, “all widower Humbert had to do, wanted to do, or would do, was to give wan-looking though sun-colored little orphan aux yeux battus…a sound education, a healthy and happy girlhood, a clean home, nice girl-friends of her age…” But then we are told that “in a wink, the angelic line of conduct was erased and I overtook my prey again—and she was my Lolita again---in fact, more my Lolita than ever.” The way Humbert describes Lolita as “his prey” gives us another example of his twisted mind. It’s almost as if he see’s seducing Lolita as some kind of game.

It was surprising to me how forward Lolita was on the car ride home. After she says, “well you haven’t kissed me yet, have you?” Humbert pulls the car over and Lolita, “positively flowed into my arms.” He also says that she, “pressed her mouth to mine so hard that I felt her big front teeth.” I was shocked by Lolita’s abrupt actions and that she was forward with Humbert. I was also surprised that she would do this considering the fact that she think’s her mother is still alive, and had just a few minutes ago referred to Humbert as, “Dad.”

I was confused as to what Humbert meant by “Haze jalopy” when he says on page 116, “If we did not get to the hotel soon, I felt I would lose all control over the Haze jalopy with its ineffectual whispers and whimsical brakes…”

When Lolita and Humbert finally get to the hotel room, there is a scene where Lolita crept into Humbert’s waiting arms, after she had told him “let’s cut out the kissing game and get something to eat.” Then Humbert starts speaking very strangely and says, “What’s the Katter with misses?” and then later says, “Show wight ray.” It’s almost as if Humbert has lost control of his ability to speak, or maybe he is trying to talk in a baby voice in order to seduce Lolita? The whole thing was very strange and didn’t quite make sense to me.

I also thought it was strange when Humbert and Lolita are on the way to dinner we are told that, “daughter swinging her old white purse, father walking in front (nota bene: never behind, she is not a lady.) I thought this was also very odd that he would only walk in front of her because even though he was trying to seduce her, he didn’t consider her to be a “lady”, just a “nymphet”.

At dinner right before Humbert is going to give the sleeping pill to Lolita he says, “I can only explain my behavior then by the mechanism if that dream vacuum wherein revolves a deranged mind; but at the time, it all seemed quite simple and inevitable to me.” It’s almost as if he realizes what he is doing is so creepy and wrong that it belongs in a horror movie, but then he goes back to being his deranged self and says it seems inevitable.

It is unbelievable to me that Humbert thinks that telling the judge what he was doing was ok because, “I was still firmly resolved to pursue policy of sparing her purity by operating only in the stealth of night, only upon a completely anesthetized little nude. Restraint and reverence were still my motto.” Humbert is completely misunderstanding the fact that a jury will not be empathetic to him just because he was only doing dirty things to Lolita at night, or when she wouldn’t realize, in an attempt to preserve her innocence. He was still taking advantage of an underage girl, which is wrong and unnerving no matter when or how it is done.