Lolita

The Work of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is a most famous one. It has been transcribed into theater and film, with some changes to the story line, but keeping the same moral issues, pedophilia or nymphetism, as he calls it in his work. The ‘nymphets” the authors relates to in the words of the main character, so called Humber Humbert, was his dilemma, his obsession. It tortured him so much that he was never sure how to act on it. It was an everyday fight against his morals and desires “While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body's every plea. One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic. Taboos strangulated me. Psychoanalysts wooed me with pseudo liberations of pseudo libidoes(18).”

His dilemma was so that he tried to escape in his world of literature and live in this world to escape his moral conflict:“But let us be prim and civilized. Humbert tried hard to be good. Really and truly, he did. He had the utmost respect for ordinary children, with their purity and vulnerability, and under no circumstances would he have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the least risk of a row. But how his heart beat when, among the innocent throng, he espied a demon child, "enfant charmante et fourbe," dim eyes, bright lips, ten years in jail if you only show her you are looking at her. So life went.” He would go as far to analyze different societies to try and find a coherent and benevolent solution to his desires; “East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds. After all, Dante fell madly in love with Beatrice when she was nine, a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson frock, and this was in 1274, in Florence, at a private feast in the merry month of May. And when Petrarch fell madly in love with his Laureen, she was a fair-haired nymphet of twelve running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight, in the beautiful plain as descried from the hills of Vaucluse.”

The main issue Humber Humbert (HH) was indeed this insatiable need of satisfaction. The repression he attempted to keep under control was beyond his own control. This need went and took hold of any morality he had left in order to feel happy and to the impossible and illegal, “because my own desire for her blinds me when she is near. I am not used to being with nymphets, damn it (44). This is the reason why he attempted to get married and have a stable relationship, but his mind in unfortunately set on “praying his pray” without even realizing it. His audacity in relinquishing his morality once confronted in the situation, actually meeting Dolores Haze (Lolita) only proves his psychological issues of pedophilia. It lets you explore into the mind of those who have these type of sexual disorders and loss of any ethical and moral behavior. The works describes over and over how his “longing,” “agony,” “insatiable desire,” continues to haunt HH as he moves along into an affair with his addiction, his Lolita. As anything that’s incorrect, especially morally incorrect, there are consequences, and HH and Lolita both suffered them.