2. Sumary & Analysis Park One
Part Two,
Summary: Chapter 1
Humbert and Lolita begin their travels across the United States, and Humbert
describes in detail the many typically American motels and hotels they stay in.
Describing Lolita as a child driven by whims, Humbert indulges most of her
fancies, except when she wants to mingle with other tourists. He occasionally
allows her to mix with other girls her own age, but he restricts her access to
boys. Humbert realizes that he must secure Lolita’s cooperation in order to
continue in this fashion and to keep her from complaining too much. He
emphasizes to Lolita that she has no one else but him: if she accuses him of
rape, she’ll end up at a state-run reformatory school. Humbert continues to
distract her with new destinations and new gifts. Over the course of a year,
they travel all over the country, ending up in the northeastern town of Beardsley, Lolita’s
birthplace.
Summary: Chapter 2
Humbert states that their tour did not do America justice. Rather, they
wandered from tourist spot to tourist spot simply in order to keep Lolita
tolerably amused. Lolita is always eager to pick up hitchhikers, and Humbert
realizes that their continual sexual activity has given Lolita an air that
attracts other men and boys. He tries to prevent her from seeing other boys,
but Lolita likes to flirt. Humbert enjoys watching other female children play,
but Lolita would rather ride horseback or play tennis. Once, during a match,
Humbert believes that he sees a man holding a racket and talking to Lolita.
Humbert claims that he tried everything to show Lolita a good time but admits
that he was mainly concerned with keeping the affair secret and keeping Lolita
happy enough to have sex with him. He states that he is very happy, but Lolita
constantly hurts him with her indifference and her desire to meet other people.
Summary: Chapter 3
Humbert attempts to relive his experience with Annabel by taking Lolita to
the beach. He fails to re-create the past and consoles himself by having sex
with Lolita in beautiful outdoor locations. They make love by the mountains and
get caught by a woman and her children, barely managing to escape. Humbert and
Lolita see many popular movies, and at one two women catch him fondling Lolita
in the movie theater. Once again, Humbert just escapes without incident. Even
when they occasionally encounter policemen, Lolita does not reveal their
arrangement. Anxious about the legality of the situation, not to mention
dwindling funds, Humbert decides to settle in Beardsley and teach at the
Beardsley Women’s College, while sending Lolita to the sedate girls’ school.
Humbert realizes that despite their wide travels, they have really seen
nothing, and he believes their trip has somehow defiled a great country. He
also knows that Lolita cries every night, while he pretends to sleep.
Analysis
In Part Two, Nabokov writes his version of the all-American road novel, but
from a jaded, distracted, and distinctly European point of view. Humbert and
Lolita go everywhere suggested by their various road guides, but they see very
little of consequence, since Humbert plans the trip mainly to evade society’s
prying eyes and to keep Lolita entertained. Like many expatriates, Nabokov
included, Humbert is simultaneously appalled and intrigued by American kitsch.
In particular, he notes the odd names of their destinations and the
particularities of that populist American invention, the motel. Humbert appreciates
America’s natural beauty
even as he admits that their trip, prompted by a pedophiliac relationship, did
not do America
justice. Like many teenagers, Lolita is even less charmed by their vagabond
lifestyle, preferring the movies and the company of strangers to vaguely
educational, mostly touristy destinations. Humbert fails in his efforts to
educate Lolita about the various significant places they pass, since he himself
isn’t particularly interested in anything but their secret relationship. Unlike
more classically reverential road-trip tales, in which the travelers gain a
deeper understanding of the world and themselves through their journeys,
Humbert and Lolita’s trip is ultimately a sham, a blind stumbling from location
to location without any subsequent spiritual growth or deeper meaning.
Humbert has now crossed over into a world without any internal or external
moral boundaries. Because of their constant travels, Humbert remains outside
society’s regulations and manages to convince most people that he is merely an
overprotective father. Never remaining anywhere for long, he manages to evade
society’s watchful eye. He is caught fondling Lolita twice and has multiple
encounters with the police, but he always makes a quick escape before meeting any
real opposition. Though he constantly worries about the law, Humbert rarely
experiences any hindrance from official authorities. In some ways, this freedom
indicates a willful blindness on society’s part, and perhaps even a certain
amount of complicity in Humbert and Lolita’s relationship.
By traveling constantly, Humbert has eliminated not only external obstacles
to his affair with Lolita but also any internal moral qualms he might have had
if they’d stayed in one place. He wastes his thoughts on their next destination
or sexual encounter, rather than on the consequences of his actions. Before
their first sexual encounter, Humbert’s dreams were limited to drugging and
fondling Lolita, stopping short of actually having sex with her. Now the reader
can see how naïve this plan was—and how completely Humbert’s desire has
consumed him. He terrorizes Lolita into staying with him by threatening her
with reform school, then doubles his efforts with bribery, a tactic he knows is
corrupting Lolita’s morals. Indeed, as the novel continues, Lolita sees their
relationship as an increasingly financial one. Humbert hears Lolita’s sobs at
night, and though they cause him pain, they don’t prompt him to reconsider his
plans for her. He remains convinced that he can make Lolita happy and still
keep their sexual relationship intact.
Though Humbert doesn’t concern himself with whether Lolita enjoys their
carnal relationship, he does notice that her sexual experience has made her
irresistible to men. It remains somewhat ambiguous how aware of her
attractiveness Lolita is, but she clearly enjoys male company. Her
flirtatiousness can be seen either as sexual precociousness or, perhaps, a
veiled attempt to reattach herself to more conventional society, since she is
drawn to families and hitchhikers as well as young men. Humbert’s jealousy
causes him to control her even more tightly, as well as to see every man as a
potential threat, including the mysterious man at the tennis court. Humbert’s
fear about losing Lolita to another man will come true, as Quilty emerges from
the shadows and makes himself known. Meanwhile, Lolita’s eagerness to mix with
other people is just one sign of her unhappiness with her claustrophobic
relationship with her stepfather/lover.
Summary: Chapter 4
With the help of Humbert’s acquaintance Gaston Godin, Humbert and Lolita
move to 14 Thayer Street,
an unimpressive house in Beardsley. Humbert is disappointed in the Beardsley School for Girls, which emphasizes
social skills rather than intellectual achievement. The headmistress, Pratt,
believes that Beardsley girls must focus on the “four D’s”: Dramatics, Dance,
Debating, and Dating. Humbert is appalled, but some teachers reassure him that
the girls do some good, solid schoolwork. The Thayer Street house has a view of the
school playground, which pleases Humbert, since he believes he will be able to
watch Lolita and, he hopes, other nymphets. Unfortunately, builders arrive to
make changes and block his view.
Summary: Chapter 5
Humbert describes Beardsley and his neighbors, with whom he is on civil yet
distant terms. He constantly worries that they might snoop on his arrangement.
Humbert also worries that Lolita might confide in their cook, Mrs. Holigan, and
tries to make sure that they are never left alone together.
Summary: Chapter 6
Humbert’s friendship with Gaston Godin, a popular man regarded as a French
sophisticate and genius scholar, smoothes his arrival in the new town of
Beardsley. Gaston knows all of the small boys in the neighborhood and has
portraits of them, as well as famous artists, in his home. Humbert enjoys their
occasional chess games but finds Gaston to be a mediocre scholar and somewhat
dim-witted.
Summary: Chapter 7
Humbert and Lolita’s relationship has become more strained. Despite her
allowance and many small presents, Lolita wants more money, and she starts to
demand it before performing sexual favors. Humbert periodically breaks into her
room to steal back her savings so she cannot run away from him.
Summary: Chapter 8
Humbert worries about Lolita attracting boys, and he reads the local paper’s
teen advice column for instruction. He allows Lolita to interact with some boys
in groups, but never alone, a rule that upsets Lolita. Despite his attempt to
control every aspect of Lolita’s life, Humbert can’t be sure that she hasn’t
stolen away with a boy. However, he has no particular boy to suspect. Humbert
imagines how others see him and wonders how he has managed to fool everyone. He
still lives in a constant state of anxiety.
Summary: Chapter 9
Humbert finds himself disappointed by Lolita’s friends, few of whom are
nymphets. He talks to Lolita’s friend Mona to discover if Lolita has any
boyfriends, but Mona, rather than supplying Humbert with details, seems
attracted to him instead.
Summary: Chapter 10
In a brief aside, Humbert describes how, sometimes, he would crawl over to
Lolita’s desk while she was doing her homework and beg for some affection. Each
time, Lolita rebuffs him.
Summary: Chapter 11
One day, Pratt informs Humbert that Lolita isn’t maturing sexually and
exhibits disciplinary problems. Pratt’s psychological analysis bothers Humbert,
as do the evaluations given by Lolita’s teachers. Pratt ends by asking Humbert
if Lolita knows about sex, and she tells him that Lolita should start dating
boys and, furthermore, that she should be allowed to take part in the school
play. Pratt goes on to say that Lolita has an alarming vocabulary of curse
words. After his appointment with Pratt, Humbert goes to see Lolita in the
study room, where Lolita and another girl are reading quietly. Sitting beside
Lolita, and behind the other girl, Humbert pays Lolita sixty-five cents to
masturbate him.
Analysis
Like Ramsdale, Beardsley is a quiet, placid little town where neighbors are
on good terms and families meet happily in the streets. Even the Beardsley School for Girls is essentially an
artistic finishing school, designed to teach girls to be pleasant and polite
company. In many ways, Beardsley represents the very model of a clean,
family-oriented 1950s town, but, like Ramsdale, secrets lurk just beneath the
surface. Nabokov indicates, for example, that the beloved Gaston is a pedophile
with a penchant for small boys, luring them to his home with the promise of
chores and small chocolates. The portraits of young boys which hang in Gaston’s
home are matched and echoed by the portraits of artists, all of whom are
homosexual, which also hang on Gaston’s walls.
Humbert doesn’t think much of Gaston, yet the bare facts of their situations
are remarkably similar, as both men are pedophiles who manage to fool
conventional society—particularly that element of society with aesthetic and
cultural pretensions. Similarly, Lolita’s friends, though they are young
teenagers in a small town, seem sexually knowledgeable and experienced. Mona,
for example, has already had a relationship with a marine. And the Beardsley School, for all its old-fashioned
ideals, is nonetheless very concerned with the sexual and romantic lives of its
students. On the surface, Beardsley is a proper small town, but, like Humbert,
the genteel image hides darker lusts and motives.
Humbert’s suddenly blocked view of the playground foreshadows Humbert’s
weakening grip on Lolita and her newly developed aptitude for deception. Once
established in the small town, Humbert expects that he and Lolita will live as
a normal family during the day while continuing to be lovers at night. However,
Lolita’s unhappiness, as well as her normal adolescent tendencies, causes her
both to rebel against Humbert and to attempt to manipulate him. Humbert bemoans
her lack of morals as she starts demanding higher fees for sexual favors, and
he becomes increasingly paranoid as Lolita establishes herself in her new
community. The relationship parodies the standard father–teenage-daughter
relationship, with Humbert establishing rules and Lolita finding ways to rebel.
Ultimately, Humbert’s fears are realized when Lolita joins the school play. The
combination of Quilty’s influence and her new dramatic training will teach
Lolita enough to escape her stepfather completely.
Nabokov’s humorous, though disturbing, depiction of an encounter between
Humbert and Pratt is indicative of the darkly ironic humor that pervades the
novel. The more Pratt talks about Lolita’s sexuality, the more Humbert appears
to be embarrassed. The more embarrassed Humbert appears, the more Pratt engages
in simplistic psychological analysis of Lolita. Not only is her highly
inaccurate diagnosis of Lolita’s sexual knowledge a slight to the practice of
psychology, but it also reinforces Humbert’s belief that he has managed to fool
everyone. Pratt’s injunction that Humbert take charge of his daughter’s sexual
education gets fulfilled, but in a way that grossly parodies her initial
intent. Instead of going to Lolita and paternally teaching her about proper,
healthy relations with the opposite sex, Humbert visits Lolita’s classroom and
pays her sixty-five cents to discreetly put her hands down his pants. The scene
represents yet another moment where Humbert passes a moral threshold in his
actions. Humbert is growing reckless, not only bringing their sexual
relationship into a public place, but doing so in the presence of another young
girl. The nameless other girl—who seems doll-like, with her porcelain skin and
platinum hair—and the classroom setting add a new element of depravity to the
act, as if Humbert is now guilty of violating more than just Lolita.
Summary: Chapter 12
After Lolita recovers from an illness, Humbert allows her to throw a small
party with boys. The party isn’t a success, and the boys don’t impress Lolita,
which is such a relief for Humbert that he buys her a new tennis racket. For
her birthday, he buys her a bicycle and a book of modern American paintings,
and while he enjoys watching her ride the bike, he remains disappointed by her
inability to appreciate fine art.
Summary: Chapter 13
Lolita begins rehearsing for a play entitled The Enchanted Hunters,
in which she plays a farmer’s daughter who bewitches a number of hunters.
Humbert notes that the play has the same name as the hotel he and Lolita first
stayed in, but he doesn’t think much of it. He also doesn’t mention the
coincidence to Lolita, for fear that she’ll mock him and his nostalgia. At the
time, Humbert assumes the play is nothing more than a trifling work written
specifically for schoolchildren. He tells the reader that he now knows the play
to be a recent composition, written by a noted playwright. Humbert scoffs at
the play’s overt romanticism and fantasy. One day, as Lolita rides her bike, she
teasingly asks Humbert if the Enchanted Hunters was, in fact, the name of the
hotel where he first raped her.
Summary: Chapter 14
Some days later, Humbert becomes outraged when he gets a call from Lolita’s
piano teacher, who tells him that Lolita has been missing her lessons. When
confronted, Lolita claims she has been rehearsing for the play in a local park.
Lolita’s friend Mona corroborates the story, but Humbert assumes both girls are
lying. While Humbert and Lolita discuss the issue heatedly, he realizes that
she’s changed and possesses fewer nymphet qualities. Humbert panics and
threatens to take her away from Beardsley if she continues lying. Lolita
becomes furious, and they have a loud, angry fight in which she accuses him of
violating her and murdering her mother. Humbert grabs her by the wrist and
attempts to restrain her. Just then, a neighbor calls to complain about the
noise, and as Humbert apologizes, Lolita escapes from the house. Humbert drives
around looking for her and finally finds her in a telephone booth. Lolita tells
Humbert that she hates the school and the play and wants to leave Beardsley,
but only if they go where she wants to go. Relieved, Humbert agrees to her
demands. At home, Lolita tells Humbert to carry her upstairs, as she’s feeling
romantic. Humbert confesses that this brought him to tears.
Summary: Chapter 15
Humbert tells the school that he’s been hired as a consultant for a movie in
Hollywood, but
promises to return. Excited to be traveling again, Lolita plans out where they’ll
go and where they’ll stay. As they’re driving away from the town, Edusa Gold,
the acting coach, pulls up alongside them in her car. She says it’s a shame
Lolita couldn’t finish the play, since the playwright himself was so taken with
her. As Edusa drives off, Humbert asks Lolita who wrote the play. Lolita tells
him it was some old woman, “Clare Something.” With that, Humbert and Lolita
start their travels.
Summary: Chapter 16
Humbert and Lolita stay in a succession of hotels. Humbert keeps a very close
watch on Lolita, to keep her from communicating with anyone he doesn’t know.
However, Lolita occasionally manages to disappear, even under Humbert’s
watchful eye. She changes her mind often about their destinations, sometimes
wanting to stay on for no apparent reason. One day, Humbert goes out but
suddenly feels nervous, and he returns to the hotel room to find Lolita
completely dressed. Humbert’s suspicions, while still vague, grow stronger.
Summary: Chapter 17
Humbert secretly keeps a gun that belonged to Lolita’s father and stands
guard with it at night. He reminds the reader that, in Freudian analysis, a gun
represents the father’s phallus.
Analysis
In these chapters, Humbert grows intensely suspicious of both Lolita’s
increasing ability to deceive him, as well as the various men they meet on
their travels. However, despite his mounting paranoia, Humbert remains unable
to grasp the truth of his situation. For example, though he reads The
Enchanted Hunters carefully and recognizes the strange coincidence between
the play’s title and the name of the hotel where he and Lolita first
consummated their relationship, he doesn’t take the production as a warning
sign. Unable to see this coincidence as foreshadowing anything, Humbert can
only offer a passive, ineffectual response: a intellectual, critical analysis
of the play’s literary value. Meanwhile, The Enchanted Hunters brings
Clare Quilty directly into Lolita’s life and, presumably, causes her to
reevaluate her relationship with Humbert. The production of The Enchanted
Hunters is the turning point at which Humbert first begins to lose Lolita,
and he fails to recognize its significance.
Humbert’s inability to see the reality of his predicament also extends to
his relationship with Lolita. Humbert loves what Lolita represents: a perfect
specimen of his ideal type of female, the nymphet. Humbert loves an image of a
girl, but not the girl herself. This refusal to acknowledge the real Lolita
allows him to observe all the human elements of his iconic woman—her vulgarity,
her duplicity, her rebelliousness—and remain steadfastly assured that, somehow,
he can possess Lolita forever. Only after losing Lolita will Humbert realize
how mistaken he was. At this point in the novel, however, Humbert is still the
enchanted hunter, too spellbound by his obsession to comprehend the reality of
his lover or the imminent threat Quilty represents.
In these chapters, Lolita seems less whimsical and more calculating. Up to
this point, we might have assumed that Lolita’s temperamental moods could be
attributed to the typically mercurial nature of all teenagers or to the extreme
pressure of leading a secret, deviant lifestyle. However, Lolita’s moods seem
more planned now. For example, she explains away her missed piano lessons with
preternatural calm, even arranging for Mona to lie for her. For once, Humbert’s
suspicions seem justified. Humbert blames her dramatic training for teaching
Lolita to dissemble, and he’s not entirely wrong: the theater is
responsible for her duplicity, but not quite in the way Humbert imagines. Once
again, Humbert offers an ineffectual, intellectual response, making a symbolic
connection between the necessary pretense involved in acting and the apparent
pretense Lolita is employing.
Humbert misses the more simple, straightforward explanation for Lolita’s
lies: the theater is responsible for Lolita’s betrayal because the school play
introduces her to Quilty. Humbert’s attempts to keep their relationship from
changing, as well as his attempt to arrest Lolita’s growth and keep her in a
perpetual state of nymphethood, end up having the opposite effect: pushing
Lolita away and resisting his fantasy role for her. Lolita and Humbert act out
a version of a more traditional parent-child relationship, with Lolita lying
and evading her father figure in order to challenge his strict, oppressive
regulations. Humbert doesn’t grasp this element of their relationship, which
leads him to unquestioningly accept her decision to leave Beardsley.
Even at this early stage, we can see how this journey represents a reversal
of the earlier road trip. Whereas Humbert himself planned the first trip, in
order to assert his control over and possession of Lolita, he now follows
Lolita’s whims and desires, unknowingly facilitating her escape. Previously,
Humbert was the enchanted hunter, charmed and fascinated by his prey, Lolita.
Now Humbert has become a different kind of enchanted hunter: he’s bewitched and
spellbound by Lolita’s duplicity, and, blinded by his own obsession, he is
never able to clearly spot his prey, Clare Quilty. If Humbert has become an
ineffectual hunter in these chapters, he soon realizes that he’s also become
the hunted, as his shadowy double, Clare Quilty, tracks him down in order to
steal Lolita.
Summary: Chapter 18
As they continue heading west, Humbert becomes increasingly paranoid. One
day, Humbert catches Lolita talking to a strange man, who resembles Humbert’s
relative Gustave Trapp. Lolita says she was simply giving him directions and
shrugs off Humbert’s suspicions. On the road the next day, Humbert suspects
they’re being followed by a red car but manages to evade it. Lolita says she
has misread the tour book, and by mistake they find themselves at a theater,
watching a play written by Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom. Humbert is
suspicious about the play’s authors but cannot see them well in the shadows.
When questioned, Lolita states that Vivian is actually a man and Clare is the
female author of The Enchanted Hunters. Humbert recalls that Lolita used
to have a crush on the celebrity Clare Quilty, but Lolita laughs off the idea.
Summary: Chapter 19
At the post office, Humbert reads a letter to Lolita from Mona, who
describes the school production of The Enchanted Hunters. When he
finishes the letter, he realizes that Lolita has disappeared. Humbert chases
after her, and when he finds her, Lolita says she had seen one of her friends
from Beardsley. Humbert interrogates her vigorously, but she does not budge in
her story. Humbert tells Lolita that he has written down the license plate
number of the car following them, but he discovers that Lolita has erased the
number and smacks her for it. Later, Humbert realizes that the man following
him—whom he has taken to calling Trapp, after Humbert’s Swiss relative, whom the
man resembles—has been switching cars. When Humbert’s car gets a flat tire,
Trapp stops not far behind them. Humbert gets out of the car to confront him,
but Trapp turns and speeds away while Humbert’s car, with Lolita at the wheel,
starts moving. Lolita claims that she was trying to stop the car from rolling
away. Humbert begins to keep the gun in his pocket.
Summary: Chapter 20
Despite believing that Lolita’s acting experience has taught her to be
deceitful, Humbert fondly remembers watching her go through her drama
exercises. However, that thrill doesn’t compare to the joy he feels while
watching Lolita play tennis. Humbert goes on at length, describing how
maddeningly attractive Lolita is on the tennis courts. He admits that he finds
all kinds of games romantic and magical, including his chess games with Gaston.
In the middle of one tennis game, at a hotel in Colorado,
Humbert receives an urgent note that the Beardsley School
has called. However, Humbert realizes that the school would have no way of getting
in touch with him there. From a window in the hotel, Humbert looks back to the
tennis court and sees a strange man playing doubles with Lolita. By the time
Humbert returns, the man has left and neither Lolita nor the other doubles pair
will tell him about the mysterious stranger. Lolita tells him she wants to go
swimming.
Summary: Chapter 21
Later, at the pool, Humbert sees a dark-haired man watching Lolita
lasciviously. He sees that Lolita can tell the man is watching her, and he
watches as Lolita flirts with the man from afar. Humbert recognizes him as
Trapp, the man who has been following them, but Trapp disappears before Humbert
can confront him. Humbert drinks heavily and starts to wonder if he’s imagining
Trapp.
Summary: Chapter 22
Later that night, Lolita claims to be ill. Seeing that she has a high fever,
Humbert takes her to the hospital. He stays in a nearby motel, separated from
Lolita for the first time in two years. Lolita recovers quickly, and Humbert
visits her in the hospital, bringing presents. He sees a letter on Lolita’s bed
tray, but the nurse insists that it belongs to her, not Lolita. Later, Humbert
himself becomes feverish, but he tells the hospital he’ll pick up Lolita the
following day. However, when he arrives at the hospital, the doctors inform him
that Lolita has already left with her uncle. Humbert goes into a violent rage
but manages to get himself out of the hospital. He vows to kill Lolita’s
abductor.
Analysis
In this section, the novel begins to resemble a traditional crime novel and
detective story. As in the gangster movies Lolita adores, Humbert and Lolita
find themselves pursued by mysterious cars and strange, shadowy men. Humbert
begins to fall into the role of a film noir protagonist, adopting the
appropriate language and habits, drinking heavily and calling his gun his
“chum.” Both the reader and Humbert find themselves awash in clues, but many of
those clues will end up as nothing more than red herrings, or dead ends. The
combination of Humbert’s paranoia, the mysterious cars, and Lolita’s
inexplicable absences make Humbert’s situation seem dire indeed. The more
Humbert tries to prevent the inevitable, the less control he has over Lolita—or
even himself. Despairing, he turns to violence, hoping to eliminate his mounting
sense of dread by eliminating his shadowy pursuer, whom he refers to as
“Trapp,” with a pun on “trap” that is all too appropriate to Humbert’s
situation. Humbert’s paranoia can be attributed, in part, to this shift in the
narrative’s genre. Humbert considers himself an aesthete, an intellectual, and
a romantic. He enjoys styling himself the hero in a love story, but he’s
profoundly unsuited to the role of gumshoe in a hard-boiled thriller.
The butterfly motif continues in these chapters, as Lolita transforms from
girl to woman, from hapless innocent to seemingly ruthless manipulator. If the
novel undergoes a shift in genre, from romance to crime thriller, Lolita’s role
in the narrative shifts as well. Whereas before, Lolita represented the
idealized loved one, she now represents the femme fatale, a crucial character
type in the film noir genre. Femme fatales are cruel yet irresistible, and,
like that category of character, Lolita grows increasingly indifferent to
Humbert’s disintegration, seducing him into trusting her only to betray him,
leading him to his destruction. Lolita lures Humbert to the summer production
of Quilty’s play but then hides what she knows about Quilty, convincing Humbert
that Quilty is actually a woman. She then defies Humbert by secretly erasing
Quilty’s license plate number. Humbert’s threats and bribes are having less and
less of an effect on Lolita, as she slips out of Humbert’s control. Like a
classic film noir protagonist, Humbert begins to drink too much and rely too
heavily on his gun.
We should note, however, that although Humbert seems to have fallen into
this crime thriller unwittingly, he remains the narrator of this tale. This
means that Humbert controls the shift in genre, and that the decision to cast
himself as the beleaguered, hapless detective is, ultimately, his. Lolita may
come across as a femme fatale in these chapters, but her inner psyche and
secret intentions remain just as opaque as before: it’s never made clear
whether Lolita is masterminding the whole scheme or whether she’s simply acting
on Quilty’s instructions. Similarly, what Humbert interprets as a cruel plot to
destroy him may, in fact, be the desperate actions of a girl trying to escape
an oppressive, unhealthy situation. After all, if Humbert can convince us, his
jury, that the object of his sincere devotion cruelly duped him, then he
manages to cast himself as the true victim in this situation, perhaps earning
our sympathy.
Summary: Chapter 23
Humbert retraces the tour he and Lolita took across the country, attempting
to find some clues as to Lolita’s whereabouts. As he revisits the 342 hotels
and motels they stayed at, he learns that Lolita’s abductor had been following
them for some time. The abductor has signed into various hotel registers with a
series of sophisticated, wittily allusive fake names. Humbert deduces that
Lolita and the kidnapper have been in touch since the beginning of their road
trip.
Summary: Chapter 24
Upon returning to Beardsley, Humbert plans to accost an art professor at Beardsley College, who once taught a class at
Lolita’s school. As he sits outside the professor’s classroom with the gun in
his pocket, Humbert realizes that his suspicions have made him paranoid.
Humbert hires a detective, who proves to be useless.
Summary: Chapter 25
Humbert imagines he sees Lolita everywhere and tries rid himself of her
possessions. He writes a missing persons ad in verse. Humbert psychoanalyzes
his own poem but does not post it.
Summary: Chapter 26
In his loneliness, Humbert begins a relationship with Rita, a woman in her
late twenties with a checkered history. Humbert finds her ignorant but
comforting, and their relationship lasts for two years. During this time,
Humbert gives up his search for Lolita’s abductor and spends his time wandering
with Rita, drinking heavily. Nonetheless, he finds himself returning to the old
hotels to relive memories of Lolita. He cannot, however, bring himself to go to
the Enchanted Hunters hotel. Meanwhile, Rita grows increasingly unstable and
becomes convinced that Humbert will leave her.
Summary: Chapter 27
Gradually, Rita and Humbert begin to live apart, though Humbert visits her
frequently. During one visit, Humbert discovers that two letters have been
forwarded to him. The first is from John Farlow, who remarried after Jean died
of cancer. John states that he has handed over the complicated case of the Haze
estate to an attorney named Jack Windmuller. The second letter is from Lolita.
Addressing Humbert as “Dad,” she writes that she has become Mrs. Richard F.
Schiller and is currently pregnant. She writes asking for money but withholds
her home address in case Humbert is still angry.
Summary: Chapter 28
After reading the letter, Humbert goes in search of Lolita and her new
husband. Taking the gun along with him, Humbert plans to kill Lolita’s husband,
whom he assumes is the same man who abducted Lolita from the hospital. Though
Lolita didn’t give her specific address, Humbert manages to find the town she
lives in, Coalmont. Nervous and agitated, Humbert bathes and dresses in his
finest clothes before inquiring after the Schillers.
Summary: Chapter 29
Humbert finally tracks Lolita down to a small, clapboard house on Hunter Road. Lolita
has grown taller and wears glasses now, and is hugely pregnant. Though she has
matured past the nymphet stage, Humbert realizes he still loves her deeply.
Humbert sees Lolita’s husband, Dick, a simple working man, outside in the yard.
Lolita tells Humbert that Dick knows nothing about their past sexual
relationship. Humbert realizes that Dick didn’t abduct Lolita from the
hospital, and Lolita, wanting Humbert’s financial help, confesses that the man
who took her was the playwright Clare Quilty.
Lolita describes Quilty as the great love of her life. She tells Humbert
that Quilty knew Charlotte
and had come to Ramsdale many times to visit his uncle, Ivor Quilty, the
dentist. Dick comes inside the house, and Lolita introduces Humbert as her
father. Humbert realizes that he bears the man no ill will. When Dick returns
outside, Lolita continues her story. After she ran away with Quilty, she lived
on his ranch with his friends, all of whom engaged in strange sexual practices.
Lolita refused to participate, claiming that she only loved Quilty, and Quilty
kicked her out. She found work as a waitress and eventually met Dick. Humbert
realizes that he will love Lolita until he dies and begs her to come away with
him. Lolita thinks Humbert might give her money if she goes to a motel with
him, but Humbert says he’ll give her the money regardless of her answer and
hands her four thousand dollars. Lolita is excited by the money but firmly and
gently refuses to go away with Humbert, saying she would rather go back to
Quilty. Humbert leaves her with the money and drives off, weeping.
Analysis
These chapters continue to play with the idea that Lolita has
transformed into a detective novel. After losing Lolita, Humbert goes on a wild
goose chase, retracing their previous road trips. He uncovers seemingly
incredible coincidences, such as when he realizes that he and Lolita met at 342 Lawn Street,
consummated their relationship in Room 342 of the Enchanted Hunters hotel, and
registered in 342 hotels across the United States. However, these clues
don’t add up to anything. In the end, the presence of these incessant,
repetitive numbers shows that Humbert was right, and McFate did indeed play a
role in his journey. Beyond that, they represent nothing more than a
meaningless string of fascinating flukes.
Similarly, the clues that Lolita’s abductor has scattered along the way
prove to be nothing more than teases, providing insights into the personality
of the kidnapper but no concrete evidence as to his identity. We learn that the
mysterious stranger is witty and well read, and shares Humbert’s own interest
in puns and word games. However, the anagrams, Latin phrases, and literary
allusions seem to do nothing more than proclaim their own presence, since
Humbert eventually gives up on the prospect of finding Lolita. The mystery of
Lolita’s disappearance can’t be solved by any ordinary kind of investigation,
as we learn from the comically ineffectual detective Humbert ends up hiring.
Long after any information might have proved useful, the private eye reports
“an eighty-year-old Indian by the name of Bill Brown lived near Dolores, Colo.”
The fake registry entry for a “Will Brown, Dolores, Colo.”
ends up having an unexpected basis in reality, but the connection remains a
specious one; for all the names and numbers Humbert collects, they end up
amounting to nothing more than “nonsense data.”
Humbert’s reaction to losing Lolita, as well as his reaction to seeing her
again, exemplifies just how complicated his feelings for Lolita truly are. Over
the course of the novel, Humbert has always strived to demonstrate that he’s not
a common pedophile. For example, he grants his desire mythic qualities,
describing the objects of his affection as magical creatures capable of
bewitching a man. Humbert believes that, rather than signifying some kind of
deviant tendency, his love for young girls demonstrates his refined aesthetic
sense. By linking all subsequent girls to the original girl, Annabel Leigh,
Humbert also situates the girls within the dramatic narrative arc of his own
life. The nymphets become symbols of Humbert’s deep, innate romanticism, not
victims of his abnormal appetites. In this section of the novel, his attitude
toward nymphets changes. Now that he’s lost Lolita, Humbert still finds himself
sexually drawn to young girls, but he suppresses that craving more forcefully
and can’t imagine copulating with them anymore. When he sees her again, he
realizes that Lolita is now long past her nymphet phase, yet he finds that he’s
still smitten with her. It’s up to the reader, as Humbert’s jury, to decide
whether this devotion constitutes a genuinely selfless love and, if so, whether
that excuses Humbert’s crimes.
Similarly, we have to determine whether Clare Quilty’s crimes are
categorically worse than Humbert’s. Humbert would argue that his feelings for
Lolita are authentically romantic, while Clare’s are basely sexual. Humbert has
always situated his relationship with Lolita in a larger artistic context,
comparing the two of them to figures from literature and history. Clare is an
artist as well but produces the kind of art Humbert denigrates as vulgar and
unsubtle. Given that Humbert has always tried—unsuccessfully—to cultivate a
taste for fine art in Lolita, the fact that Lolita believes Clare to be a
“genius” seems cruelly ironic. Humbert feels disgusted by Clare’s attempt to use
his status as an artist to shield and excuse his perverse behavior. However,
Humbert is just as guilty of artistically manipulating the situation. After
all, Lolita is not a straightforward, disinterested account of the
events in question. Humbert has taken literature, his chosen medium, and
fashioned a piece of art that beguiles its audience as cleverly as Lolita
beguiles him.
Summary: Chapter 30
Humbert departs to find Dr. Ivor Quilty. Attempting to take a shortcut,
Humbert’s car gets hopelessly stuck in a muddy ditch. He walks several miles,
in the rain, to a farmhouse and waits for someone to pull his car out. Around
midnight, he manages to drive on, but exhaustion causes him to stop in a small
town, not far from the Enchanted Hunters hotel.
Summary: Chapter 31
Humbert remembers a priest he once knew in Quebec, who would discuss the nature of sin
with him at length. He confesses that, despite receiving much spiritual solace
from the priest, he himself can never forget the sinful things he inflicted on
Lolita. He claims that he will never find peace because, as he puts it, a
maniac deprived Dolores Haze of her childhood.
Summary: Chapter 32
Humbert realizes that because he was so consumed by his desire for her, he
never really understood the real Lolita. In his narrative, he begins addressing
Lolita directly. Humbert recalls a time, back in Beardsley, when Lolita burst
into tears after witnessing the ordinary, normal affection between her friend
and her friend’s father. Humbert realizes that even her strained relationship
with Charlotte
was preferable to Lolita’s life with him and that Lolita must miss her mother.
Summary: Chapter 33
Humbert returns to Ramsdale. He visits the old Haze house, now occupied by a
new family with a nymphet daughter. Humbert visits Windmuller’s office, then
goes to see Dr. Ivor Quilty on the pretext of needing some dental work. From
Ivor, Humbert learns that Clare Quilty lives in Pavor Manor, on Grimm Road. With
that knowledge, he leaves Dr. Quilty abruptly.
Summary: Chapter 34
Humbert drives past Pavor Manor and imagines what kind of scandalous,
reprehensible activities must be taking place inside. He drives back into town,
to return the next morning. Through the trees, he sees the screen of a drive-in
movie. Humbert can see a man in the film raise a gun before the trees obscure
his vision.
Summary: Chapter 35
The next day, Humbert arrives at Pavor Manor with his loaded gun. Humbert
enters the huge and extravagantly furnished house and hunts for Quilty. Quilty
emerges from a bathroom and appears unmoved by Humbert’s requests that he
recall Lolita. While Humbert explains to Quilty why he must die, Quilty tries
to distract him with clever wordplay. Quilty lunges for the gun, and the two
men wrestle. Humbert regains control of the gun, then reads a poem detailing
Quilty’s crimes. Quilty critiques the poem and offers Humbert many bribes,
including concubines and erotic pictures. Humbert shoots, and Quilty tries to
escape, running through the house. Humbert shoots him many times, but Quilty
does not seem to die. Quilty begs for his life, but Humbert finally kills him.
Humbert realizes that he does not feel any peace and is surprised to see a
group of people sitting in the drawing room downstairs, drinking. Humbert
claims he killed Quilty, but no one notices.
Summary: Chapter 36
Humbert then drives off, and, out of sheer rebellion, speeds down the wrong
side of the road. He gets arrested after running a red light and driving into a
meadow. Humbert realizes that the real tragedy is not that he has lost Lolita,
but that Lolita has been robbed of her childhood. From jail, Humbert writes
that he opposes capital punishment but would sentence himself to thirty-five
years for rape and dismiss the rest of the charges. He addresses the last section
to Lolita, telling her to be true to her husband Dick and advising her not to
talk to strangers. He also asks her not to mourn Quilty, as he felt that
killing Quilty was a public service. He also states that, if given a choice
between Quilty and Humbert, Humbert should live, so he might chronicle this
story and immortalize Lolita through his art.
Analysis
As Humbert winds down his presentation to the jury of his readers, the
question of appropriate punishment—the inevitable conclusion to any criminal trial—must
be addressed. Humbert explicitly raises the issue of his own punishment twice
in this section, first in Chapter 31 and then again in Chapter 36. In Chapter
31, Humbert suggests that no legal punishment could possibly prove sufficient
and appropriate for his crimes. He will personally, however, suffer eternally
under the knowledge that he is ultimately responsible for the loss of Lolita’s
childhood. In Chapter 36, Humbert recommends that he be sentenced to
thirty-five years in jail for his crimes, though he can’t advocate the death
penalty, being morally opposed to capital punishment. The novel itself refuses
to offer any closure on the subject of Humbert’s punishment. We never see
Humbert tried in a literal courtroom, since, as we learn from the foreword to Lolita,
Humbert dies in jail before reaching trial. The novel arrests itself at the
stage of judgment, leaving the task of appraising Humbert’s guilt and
determining his sentence in our hands.
At the end of the novel, Humbert stops presenting his case to us, the jury,
and instead addresses his victim directly. Humbert doesn’t plead for Lolita’s
forgiveness, but he does attempt to make peace with her. He tells her that he
is “thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic
sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may
share, my Lolita.” Here, Humbert alludes to several figures from art history,
from the aurochs, or bison, of ancient cave paintings to the religious
iconography of the Old Masters, rendered in their “durable pigments.” Like the
“prophetic sonnets” of William Shakespeare—in which Shakespeare predicted that
his poems would life forever and that the sweetheart described within them
would likewise be immortalized—Humbert offers his work of art as a present and
penance to his darling. Humbert and Lolita share the “immortality” of Lolita,
becauseas long as the novel exists, there will be a record that preserves their
time together. Though Humbert (and Nabokov) couldn’t have known this at the
time, Lolita has also become a canonic masterpiece of western
literature, thereby granting it another level of immortality.
However, the question of whether Humbert’s artistic talent can mitigate his
moral guilt remains an open one. Humbert believes that the true depravity of
his crime lies in his wanton destruction of a beautiful thing—Lolita. If he
manages to recapture that lost beauty in another beautiful creation, the novel Lolita,
can we somehow forgive the corrupt criminal Humbert? When Charlotte dies, Humbert denies any
culpability in the matter, claiming that “poets never kill.” However, as
Chapter 35 demonstrates, poets do indeed kill. Humbert even composes an ode in
honor of Quilty’s murder, which he recites just before shooting him.
In the final lines of Chapter 36, Humbert speaks of “the refuge of art,” and
we may ask ourselves whether Humbert is indeed attempting to take shelter
within his beautiful, mazelike creation, hiding his sinfulness within elegant
prose. The novel ends with the word Lolita, which, quite famously, opens the
novel as well. By bracketing the novel with such an explicit instance of
symmetry, Nabokov draws attention to the novel’s formal, literary qualities. Lolita
doesn’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of emotion, but a planned,
controlled, composed account of a deeply disturbing series of events. It may
seem inappropriate, then, to respond to Lolita emotionally, even though
Humbert’s agony often seems genuine and heartbreaking. However we react to the
ending of Humbert’s tale—whether we forgive Humbert because of the obvious pain
he has suffered, or because he has created an exquisite work of art, or whether
we continue to hold him accountable for the incredible damage he has caused—Lolita
forces us to interrogate the moral aspects of art appreciation.
