Halting of Time

Even though I was continuously logged out of JSTOR while reading a passage, I managed to drudge up some thoughts of my own while reading other’s own opinions. I have concluded that the narrator is full of himself. He believed that Charlotte, Lolita’s mother, was a dumb American who spoke French horribly, and was too obsessed with a life she did not lead. His description leads us to believe that she lead a shallow existence watching soap operas, and chasing after people of wealth. Poor Charlotte he says. He lacked sympathy when she died. He whisks Lolita away on a road journey that was described by the author of the article, “Lolita’s Loose Ends: Nabokov and the Boundless novel”, James Tweedie, that the narrator went on this journey to escape time and the aging Lolita. He believes he is better than everyone, and therefore everyone must be wrong when they say that the relationship between Lolita and he is not normal. He looks down on everyone because he is afraid they might look down on him.

The narrator thinks that everyone at Beardsley is ridiculous, that Charlotte was ridiculous, her friends were, Lolita, her friends, and many others. He is cultured, and looked up to in his mind for it. He satisfies his bad thoughts by saying that he is an artist. It was stated in an article by Mathew Winston that he is a Jekyll and Hyde type character. He can act as though he is a murderer, but he speaks in a cultured manner, even fooling other authors such as Dorothy Parker who stated that she thought Humbert to be cultured and sophisticated, and it made no sense that he should be with such a brat type such as Lolita. Many people thought it interesting that she was not innocent like a child, so the narrator never really took anything away from her. This boggles many since children are related to innocence. Many people have their preconceptions, which may taint some opinions as stated by James Tweedie, of Humbert, and Humbert is caste off as a rapist, child molester, or habit to incestual relations, which he was, but he somehow was not evil. He was ignorant, or psychotic, but weirdly in love.

Humbert immortalizes Lolita as did many authors that he mentions of their child lovers. It is hard in this novel to tell whether he loves Lolita for her age, or for who she is. One is more socially acceptable, and therefore highly relevant. Lolita is Humbert’s “souvenir” in his passage of time (Lolita and the Dangers of Fiction; Mathew Winston). Humbert must want to stunt her growth and have her love him forever, but she is not at the stage that he is in. He is fully developed, and she is not. I love how this book starts out with her coming on to Humbert and how Lolita is not the innocent flower that she is supposed to be. It was also mentioned by Mathew Winston, that as Edgar Allen Poe wrote of “Annabel Lee”, so did the narrator of his first love, Annabel Leigh. I thought this was very interesting since the author shows off his literary knowledge often, and breaks out into French many a time which makes it hard for a modern day American teenager to read, but the reference to “Annabel Lee” was something that I knew, and found similar to his wanting to put down Lolita as immortal.

By the narrator wanting to stop the passage of time, it is ruining both Lolita’s and his life. She misses out, and so doe he since it is not possible to halt time, and by attempting to do so, it causes them to miss out even more. It is too dramatic to say that love can allow this since it is such an awesome thing because Lolita’s immature demeanor and the narrator’s acknowledgement of this behaviour is only evidence that it should not be taken seriously. Students do not doubt the love that was shared between Romeo and Juliet even though they had such a distance in age. They were both mature and held respect for one another. In Lolita, the narrator holds no respect for Lolita as anything but a doll. This reminds me of the short story “A Doll’s House”, and how love does not emerge from such situations. Both parties must love one another, but in this situation, convince the reader of the mutual respect, not lustfulness, and a true excuse for the halting of time is approved.