What Does Lolita Symbolize

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” Told in the perspective of the culprit himself, author Vladimir Nabokov dives into the mind of a pedophile who desperately tries to hide his mad behavior from society. Once in love with a young girl named Annabel, who later dies of typhoid fever, Humbert can’t seem to fully recover from her sudden passing. As years go by, Annabel’s image remains embedded within his memory. On meeting Dolores Haze, he becomes enraptured by her boyish charm and delicate frame because it stands as a physical reminder of Humbert’s long lost love; however, Lolita is only twelve years old, and he, thirty-six. Although he tangles himself in an immoral relationship, his teenage years and character development by the end
of his telling offer a reasonable sense of forgiveness and redemption in the eyes of the reader.

By marrying Charlotte Haze, Dolores’ mother, Humbert finds a valid reason to be even closer to Lolita than ever before.
His manipulative obsession over his “step-daughter” intensifies as the story progresses: finding pleasure in having her leg brush up against his thigh, giving her an allowance and then taking it away because “you see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go”, and finally, shooting the lover who impregnates and leaves her out in the cold. This unsound fixation on Lolita is a result of an unresolved mental conflict from years prior; this madness, whether through his unfortunate past or clever use of linguistic patterns, makes the reader involuntarily pity the pedophile. How can this be? Humbert himself confesses, “In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child.” This girl-child being Annabel, in this line, he admits to having a major problem, making the reader wonder what if she didn’t die? His admission seduces the reader into feeling sorry for his mental anguish because perhaps there could have been a way to prevent his pedophilic behavior. Annabel’s death at the “nymphet phase” froze his perception of ideal lovers at that specific point in time, and although he aged, he remained mesmerized by young girls, ages nine to fourteen. Despite marrying women his age, he did not overcome the illegal
fascination.

It’s difficult to decipher where to draw the line in a memoir since every single detail is controlled by Humbert himself, but as the adult, guardian, and sole protector of Lolita, he undoubtedly holds the upper hand. He states that she initiates the physical contact, but fails to mention that he never took any strides to stop her advances, causing this delusion to fall on her in the eyes of the reader.

Wrong on so many levels, Humbert’s perspective still leaves mixed emotions within the reader based on his memories and the book’s final pages, revealing personal growth in his character. Taking the reader to the moment in which a seventeen-year-old Lolita is kicked out of the house by Clare Quilty (her lover at the time), Humbert exposes a side of him that he failed to show before. Although Lolita is past the age of fourteen, he realizes that he feels authentic love for her. Instead of forcing her into having anything to do with him, he leaves her four grand and apologizes for his mistakes, knowing he has lost her forever.