Lolita and Morality

Morality in Lolita:

            Lolita is the tale of forbidden love, abuse, obsession, and makes you rethink the concept of love. In one hand Humber Humbert’s obsession with Lolita is wrong and disgusting because she is twelve and he is an adult. But on the other hand he describes his love for her in a poetic and in what sounds like a very honest way. He describes it in how “normal” people who are in love would feel. Love is irrational for most, it is a love or death like feeling that engulfs your being to the core. This is what H.H. describes as what he feels for Lolita. He even thinks murderous thoughts of drowning her mom just to stay with her.

            It is interesting to see how Nabokov uses language to make the reader take his side and feel for him. He uses poetic language, “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul” to make the reader see him as a sophisticated intellectual that has a deeper understanding of love than most, at the same time showing that he is just a man with desire and needs like most men.

            The book is written in the point of view of H.H. (a criminal) so the whole time he is trying to convince you and lure you to think he’s right. You have to think about your own morals, what’s right and what’s wrong, when you’re reading the book. Sometimes you find yourself contradicting your beliefs like if this isn’t love then what is love?

            Obviously as you learn later, through H.H.’s dangerous and abusive actions, you can clearly see that Humbert Humbert is insane. He is a sick individual that happens to be very eloquent but a psycho nevertheless.