LOLITA BY Vladimir Nabokov Summary

 LOLITA BY Vladimir Nabokov Summary

Important notes 

LOLITA

Vladimir Nabokov

 

 

 

·         Dolores (Lolita) Haze

·         She is the nymphet, sexually attractive girls whom Humbert seduces.

·         An adolescent, she is seductive, flirty, and impulsive.

·         Initially she finds herself attracted to Humbert, competing with her mother for his affections.

·         However, Humbert becomes more dominating hence she gets tired of him. .

·         Humbert attempts to educate her, but she remains attached to American popular culture and unimpressed with his cultured ideas.

·         Eventually, she elopes with Clare Quilty, but he abandons her after she refuses to participate in child pornography.

·         She eventually marries Dick Schiller and dies in childbirth.

·         Clare Quilty

·         Quilty is a successful dramatist.

·         He was a child pornographer who takes a liking to sexually attractive, Lolita.

·         He stalks her throughout the novel ,eventually  kidnaps her away from Humbert.

·         Though Lolita is in love with him, he eventually tires of her.

·         Nabokov gives less importance to Quilty’s but at the end he reveals that to the readers..

·         Quilty is amoral, highly literate, and completely corrupt.

·         Charlotte Haze

·         Lolita’s mother and Humbert’s wife.

·         A middle-class woman who aspires to be cultured and sophisticated.

·         Charlotte never manages to be much more than a bourgeois housewife.

·         Her relationship with Lolita was always problematic.

·         Charlotte worships Humbert and stays blind to his pedophilia and lust for her daughter until she discovers his diary.

·         She dies soon after in a car accident.

 

·         Annabel Leigh

·         Humbert’s childhood love. Annabel and her family visit Humbert’s father’s hotel as tourists.

·         Despite having many physical encounters, Humbert and Annabel are unable to consummate their adolescent love.

·         She later dies of typhus in Corfu.

·         Humbert remains obsessed with her memory until he meets Lolita.

·         Valeria

·         In order to get rid of nymphet’s addiction Humbert marries Valeria.

·         Humbert finds Valeria intellectually inferior and often bullies her.

·         Valeria takes the great decision to leave Humbert.

·         When he plans to move to America, Valeria leaves him to marry a Russian taxi driver.

·         Unfortunately, Valeria and her husband die in California years later.

 

·         Jean Farlow

·         A friend of Charlotte’s and the wife of John Farlow.

·         John and Jean Farlow are among Charlotte and Humbert’s few friends.

·         After Charlotte’s death, she secretly kisses Humbert.

·         She eventually dies of cancer.

·         Frederick Beale, Jr.

The driver of the car that kills Charlotte.

 

 

THEME

 

·         The strength of language;

·         the differences between  European and American cultures;

·         the irrational of psychiatry;

·         the alienation caused by exile

·       SUMMARY

·        We meet with  John Ray, Jr., Ph.D., explaining the strange story that will follow.

·        Ray states , he received the manuscript, titled Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male.

·        It is from the author’s lawyer.

·        The author himself, known by the false name of Humbert Humbert (or H. H.).

·        He died in jail of coronary thrombosis while awaiting a trial.

·        Ray asserts that the author’s actions are despicable.

·        His writing remains beautiful and persuasive even though he is a criminal.

·        His book encourage parents to raise better children in a better world.

·        In the manuscript, Humbert relates his peaceful upbringing on the Riviera, where he encounters his first love, the twelve-year-old Annabel Leigh.

·        Annabel and the thirteen-year-old Humbert could never complete their love, and Annabel’s death from typhus four months later haunts Humbert.

·        Although Humbert goes on to a career as a teacher of English literature, he spends time in Ma mental institution and works a succession of odd jobs.

·        He was faulty for his failed marriage.

·        Humbert is obsessed with nymphets.

·        Eventually, Humbert comes to the United States and takes a room in the house of widow Charlotte Haze in suburban New England town.

·        He becomes instantly infatuated with her twelve-year-old daughter Dolores, also known as Lolita.

·        Humbert watches her every move constantly, occasionally flirts with her, and confides his pedophiliac longings to a journal.

·        On the other side even Lolita’s mother has fallen in love with him.

·        Charlotte was send for the summer camp and her mother gets married to Humbert.

·        This was done by Humbert to stay close to Lolita.

·        Humbert made a plan to murder his wife , but he can’t go through with it.

·        Humbert had maintained a diary to write personal stuffs but this proved to be a great mistake of him.

·        His wife understands that for Lolita he had married her.

·        Humbert denies everything, but Charlotte tells him she is leaving him and storms out of the house.

·        Situation turns in narrators favour,at that moment, a car hits her and she dies instantly.

·        Humbert goes to the summer camp and picks up Lolita.

·        Only when they arrive at a motel does he tell her that Charlotte passed away.

·        After this incident step-father and Lolita are together.

·        Lolita seduces him, rather than Humbert.

·        The pair had gala time for year across the country.

·         Humbert becomes increasingly obsessed with Lolita and she learns to manipulate him.

·        When Lolita takes advantage of his obsession he threatens to put her in an orphanage.

·        A strange figure follows  them in their travels.

·        Humbert eventually gets a job at Beardsley College somewhere in the Northeast, and Lolita enrolls in school.

·        Lolita gets attracted to young boys of her age.

·        Humbert feels insecure and stops her from doing so.

·        Nonetheless, he allows her to appear in a school play.

·        Lolita begins to hide many things from Humbert.

·        He  accuses her of being unfaithful and takes her away on another road trip.

·        On the road, Humbert had a doubt  that they are being followed.

·        Lolita says she doesn’t notice anything at this point Humbert accuses her of conspiring with their stalker.

·        Lolita becomes ill, and Humbert takes her to the hospital.

·        From the hospital itself Lolita was kidnapped.

·        Sisters said her uncle took her as she was ok.

·        Humbert flies into a rage, but then he calms himself and leaves the hospital, heartbroken and angry.

·        He doesn’t give up easily, for about the next two years, Humbert searches for Lolita,

·        He turned no stone unturned in unearthing clues about her kidnapper.

·        He halfheartedly takes up with a woman named Rita.

·         After sometime he receives a note from Lolita, now married and pregnant, asking for money.

·        Assuming that Lolita has married the man who had followed them on their travels, Humbert becomes determined to kill him.

·        But to his surprise he finds Lolita, poor and pregnant at seventeen.

·        Lolita’s husband was not the kidnapper but it was someone else.

·        When pressed, Lolita admits that Clare Quilty, a playwright whose presence has been felt from the beginning of the book, had taken her from the hospital.

·        Quilty was engaged in pornography and he wanted Lolita to feature in the same.

·        The denial of this girl made him throw her of his life.

·        Still devoted to Lolita, Humbert begs her to return to him.

·        Lolita curtly refuses. Humbert gives her 4,000 dollars and then departs.

·        He catches Quilty at his house and shoots him multiple times, which kills him.

·        Humbert is jailed for the murder.

·        In the jail he continues to write his memoir which he used to do from years back.

·        He wanted it to be publish after the death of Lolita but who knew that she would go so soon.

·        Lolita dies while delivering child.

·        At the same time Humbert dies of heart failure.

·        Finally the jail staffs finds the manuscript.

·        The manuscript is sent to John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.

·        He was the man who was reading the memoir in the beginning.

·        He understands the point of view of Humbert but could not help about it.

·        Society is run under a stipulated norms which all had to follow.

The end

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