Lolita: Analysis of Major Characters
"Lolita: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the complex and controversial figures within Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Lolita." At the center is Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged European man who narrates his story while imprisoned for murder. Humbert's obsession with "nymphets," particularly his stepdaughter Lolita Haze, serves as a catalyst for the novel's exploration of desire and morality. Lolita, a twelve-year-old girl characterized as manipulative and carefree, becomes the object of Humbert's fixation after her mother, Charlotte Haze, passes away. Charlotte, who is depicted as a conventional and humorless figure, ultimately suffers a tragic fate upon discovering Humbert's disturbing affection for her daughter. The narrative also introduces Clare Quilty, a playwright who becomes entangled in the lives of Humbert and Lolita, leading to conflicts that culminate in violence. Additionally, the analysis touches on secondary characters like Valeria, Humbert's first wife, and Rita, a companion during his search for Lolita, highlighting the isolation and desperation experienced by Humbert throughout the story. This character breakdown provides insight into the moral complexities and psychological themes that permeate the novel.
Lolita: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
First published: 1955
Genre: Novel
Locale: France and numerous small American towns
Plot: Satire
Time: The late 1940's and early 1950's
Humbert Humbert, the novel's middle-aged, Central European narrator, who “writes” the book as his confession while in a prison cell awaiting trial for murder. After his sudden death of coronary thrombosis a few days before the trial's scheduled start, his book is “edited” by John Ray, Jr., presumably a professor of psychology. Humbert's name is fictitious and often distorted in the text, rendered as Humbug, Humbird, Humburger, Hamburg, or Homberg. Born in 1910 in Paris, he is the son of a Continental European father (with Swiss, French, and Austrian genes) who owned a luxury hotel on the Riviera and of a beautiful English mother who is killed by a lightning bolt when the boy is three years old. Humbert traces his sexual obsession for girls between the ages of nine and fourteen—his term for them is “nymphets”—to a case of interrupted coitus he suffered when, at the age of thirteen, he and a certain Annabel Leigh had their romance forever aborted by her early death.
Lolita Haze, also called Dolores, Dolly, Lo, and Lolly, a twelve-year-old whose mother Humbert marries. She becomes his capricious child-mistress after her mother's death. She is a gum-chewing, Coke-swilling, comic-book-addicted schoolgirl who exploits Humbert's obsession with her and is largely insensitive to his feelings. Vexed by his possessiveness, she runs off with playwright Clare Quilty, who turns out to be impotent and even more perverted than Humbert. At the age of sixteen, she marries a plain, dull, poor mechanic who quickly impregnates her. While Lolita is a “nymphet,” Humbert raves about her chestnut hair, supple limbs, honey-hued shoulders, and slim hips. After she has married and grown beyond nymphet age, he deplores her “washed-out gray eyes” and “rope-veined, narrow hands.” The “editor's” preface informs the reader that Lolita died giving birth to a stillborn girl.
Clare Quilty, an American dramatist whose most popular play is The Little Nymph and who is a year younger than Humbert. The clever Quilty pursues Humbert and Lolita throughout their cross-country wandering and induces the girl to leave her stepfather. Humbert confronts Quilty toward the novel's end, killing him in an orgy of bloodletting, pumping dozens of bullets into the playwright.
Charlotte Haze, Lolita's mother and Humbert's second wife. She is a conventionally middle-class, humorless, religious widow whose lust for him repels Humbert. He shudders over her plump thighs, coral lips, and bountiful breasts. After their marriage, she fawns over him. Then, however, she reads his secret diary and discovers his passion for her daughter, whom she detests. Rushing frantically out of the house, Charlotte is killed by a passing car.
Valeria, Humbert's first wife, who abandons him for a White Russian former colonel who has been reduced to driving a taxi in Paris.
Rita, a drunken divorcée twice Lolita's age but very slight and thin. She becomes Humbert's complaisant companion for the two years he spends searching for Lolita.
Richard (Dick) Schiller, Lolita's husband, a simple, poor, hard-of-hearing, out-of-work mechanic.