So...I thought of this blog today...

So…I thought of this blog today…Well actually I thought of it yesterday but didn’t decide to say anything until today. Am I the only one who’s ever thought of it since graduation? Probably. Is anybody gonna read this…? Well, if you do, hi! Do you miss College English too? It was a fun class…

I’m glad the blog is still here; I’d thought Mr. V said he was gonna take it down. …Well, this is nice. This way if I ever randomly miss people or the class or something, I can just come back and scroll through the blog.

A part of me is really happy to be going off to college, but still there’s a part that will miss Albertus, and the people, and good classes like College English. Good times…good times.

The Haunting of Clarence

    

   After finally finishing Lolita, I questioned why Clarence was so important over the span of the book. Clarence was mentioned multiple times by Humbert in either subtle or obvious ways. I wondered why he constantly kept referring to Clarence while telling his story of his love for Lolita. Then I finally decided that I knew why; it was because Humbert went mad after killing Clarence. Nabokov purposely made Humbert write his story this way to manipulate the audience. Humbert began writing this story about Lolita after all of the events that took place in to book happened. He constantly refers to Clarence by either speaking directly to him or telling the audience about him.

      After I had learned that Humbert had killed Clarence, it made more sense to me. Humbert was desperately in love with Lolita. The fact that Lolita did not love Humbert the same, but instead loved Clarence, killed him inside. His love in turn led him to murder Clarence. After killing Clarence, Humbert realized how wrong he had been all along. He realized that he took away a young girls innocence and hi love for her led him to kill another man similar to himself. Humbert could not live with this fact; it drove him mad. The idea of killing Clarence haunted him and he could not escape the thought of Clarence. Through this, Humbert constantly referred to Clarence in the book because he could not stop thinking about how his love for Lolita led him to kill.

Evolutional Peak

The ending of Lolita was thrilling. The conclusion of Lolita truly shows the evolution that Hummbet Humbert goes through. He understands that he is a terrible person when he calls himself a “pentapod  monster”. He understands that he had stolen/ruined Lolita’s childhood. He harvested Lolita’s childhood (nymphensy) for his own disgusting needs. However, he realizes that he can no longer continuing his merriment with Lolita; furthermore he needs to take responsibility for Lolita as an adult. The fact that he goes after Quilty is ambiguous to me because I am not sure what Humbert Humbert’s intentions really are. In one hand there is the idea that the reason he wants to kill Quilty and succeeds is because he wants to make sure that Quilty pays for kidnapping Lolita and harassing her which means that he is doing  it for Lolita. The other reason he wants to kill Quilty is because he took her away from him causing him to lose out on Lolita’s nymph stage which would be a selfish act.

Something To Wrap Your Head Around

After reading Lolita I am conflicted on who and what to believe. It seems that the fact that I am reading a pedophile/murder’s point  of view escapes me from time to time and I catch myself actually feeling some sympathy towards humbert humbert . I am not sure if what Humbert Humbert says can be so reliable, granted the gruesome details he goes into and the fact that he is in jail would lead one to believe that he has no reason to lie. But how does one even know if he is not exaggerating or twisting the truth for he could possibly just be insane. Also the idea that Humbert Humbert is a VERY pretentious person makes me wonder what lengths he’s willing to go to demonstrate how intelligent he really is. I keep playing with the possibility that Humbert Humbert story is a huge lie just to prove that he can make the reader believe he actually did the things he said he did. Since he conned have the characters in  the story what stops him from conning us.

A Father's Love

Note: I think James may have posted a relatively similar thing.

                In thinking about what to write for my final essay, it occurred to me that Humber has the same initials, H. H., as Lolita’s late father Harold Haze. Lolita has also lost her younger brother to illness. It was never mentioned how old Lolita was when her father passed away, and as far as I can recall there was no real mention of her father at all aside from when his death was spoken of. Lolita’s brother died when Lolita was a young child. Her father’s death could have occurred at any time from between the brother’s conception (though this seems unlikely) to just before Humbert appears (again, unlikely). Being that she never speaks of him one may assume that Lolita cannot remember her father and would only know him through stories and photographs if at all. There was also no mention of what sort of man Harold Haze was, which meant Lolita could have seen her father in nearly any man.

                That being said, when Humbert Humbert, another H. H., arrives at the Haze household, Lolita might never have wanted a sexual relationship but one of the father-daughter kind. All of the things which could be interpreted sexually change: Lolita grabbing Humbert’s hand in the car as she is yelled at by her mother is no longer a sexual advance but is now a child reaching out to whom she hopes could be like a gentle father for protection from her mother. When she runs upstairs and hugs him before leaving for camp, it was an example of a child’s unconditional love for their parent. Even when Lolita is older and realizes she is being the victim of abuse, she remains with him. And in the end she appears to harbor no hatred toward him.

                My thesis would have been something like “Due to her naivety and innocent nature as a child, Lolita had not realized Humbert’s intentions and looked to him not for a sexual relationship, but for a fatherly one in which she could trust him, feel protected by him and have the father-figure whom was absent throughout her childhood past.”

Final Response

Here guys you can post in the comments section you response to the following question. It should be about 2-3 paragraphs in length.

Explain, using support from the text, why Lolita is the greatest love story of our time.

Lolita's Electra complex

Certainly the love triangle that existed between Charlotte, Humbert, and Lolita is perverted. Charlotte loves Humbert, her husband, and Humbert loves Lolita, her child. Although I do not believe that the love between Lolita and Humbert is incest, I do believe that Lolita has an Electra complex. An Electra complex is not necessarily a sexual desire for one's father, but rather a desire for the man one's mother gives her affection to. Lolita and Humbert's mutual love does not exist until after Charlotte's death. This being said, according to Freud, with an Electra complex,  the girl begins to identify with and emulate her mother out of fear of losing her love.  Perhaps Lolita's sexual desire for Humbert started as a way of mourning her mother. 

This could be why Lolita moves on with her life. When one is mourning a dead loved one, it eventually passes; the void is filled. If Lolita had an Electra complex that emerged from the death of her mother, it can be argued that the timeline of Lolita's dying love for Humbert is directly correlated with the growing acceptance of her mother's death.