/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7227232]

Hi /lit/

I posted this in shitpost format last night when I was very tired, but you all didn't reply: Does Humbert Humbert overcome himself, become aware of his sins, and quintessentially change in Lolita? Trying to settle an argument with a friend.

[Anonymous No.7227281]

>>7227232
No, Humbert is an unreptentant sociopath. The whole book is him making excuses for what he did, and he is the prototypical Unreliable Narrator(TM) so you dont even know if what he is saying is true. All that is guaranteed is the death of the main participants that result directly from his behavior.

[Anonymous No.7227283]

No absolutely not. The fact of his character is him trying to convince you he's redeemed and since it's humbert you know it's a load of shit.

[Anonymous No.7227289]

>>7227281
wtf none of that happened in the movie

[Anonymous No.7227290]

>>7227232
>trying to settle and argument with a friend
Your friend being your high school teacher? And the argument being an essay?

[Anonymous No.7227310]

>>7227289
Im sorry I was mistaken, the correct answer is that Humbert is a white knight who did his best, and despite Lolita ending up married to a kind hearted man, she lives a life of lower middle class happiness, while Humbert redeems her honor.

[Anonymous No.7227316]

>>7227310
That's better

[Anonymous No.7227338]

>>7227232
>this book is completely unreadable in public
>i lack the willpower to read anytime i am exposed to anything with a keyboard

[Anonymous No.7227359]

>>7227338
>Tell my mom she haaas to read this
>"isnt it that pedo book"
>no it just has delightful prose youll really enjoy it
>"Im sorry after that america psycho crazy book of yours i picked up im just not that interested"

[Anonymous No.7227368]

>>7227359
>giving your mom BEE
it's 2015 anon, you can just tell her you're gay and keep the coke habit to yourself.

[Anonymous No.7227405]

>>7227290
I'm the friend, actually. OP---who's a stupid faglord, just btw---was arguing that the murder of CQ symbolizes Humbert killing, or overcoming, the evil within himself, and that it "completed" Humbert in the sense of allowing him to come to terms with what he had done.

Personally, I think that theory is a load of memes. Upon seeing Lolita's ruined state, he shifted blame to Claire Quilty, and thought that murdering him would be doing her justice. You can see the problem, right? This is just another example of Humbert shifting the blame away fron himseIf; if he really wanted to kill the man who ruined Lolita, he'd have committed suicide. The whole Quilty scene was meant to show that he had STILL not seen the error of his ways, still too steeped in delusion to blame himself. Murdering Quilty was just subterfuge, a stupid parody of redemption. He admittedly had a heelturn later, which I doubt the sincerity of, but regardless of whether his transformation was sincere, CQ ain't got nothing to do with it.

[Anonymous No.7227419]

>>7227405
I think you are both giving the narrative too much credit insofar as hidden meaning. Humbert basically tells us that he lost interest in Lo because she got older, not because she fell. He is pissed at Quilty because he took his little nubile girl away from him. The beauty of Lolita is in the prose structure, not the complexity of the storyline (unless you call unraveling Humbert's self serving lies complex)

Caveat: I am something of a simpleton when it comes to allegory.

[Anonymous No.7227465]

>>7227310
Huh, I've never heard of a white knight raping his damsel. Real talk, killing Quilty did nothing but falsely absolve him of guilt by allowing him to play white knight. It was desperation and delusion. He was guilty and anguished over Lolita, don't get me wrong, but killing CQ was an impotent act of self-righteousness not heel-turn heroism.

[Anonymous No.7227470]

>>7227281
He would not need to make excuses to himself if he was a sociopath

[Anonymous No.7227477]

>>7227470
>He would not need to make excuses to himself if he was a sociopath
Hes making excuses to the reader. He doesnt believe he did anything wrong.

[Anonymous No.7227480]

>>7227465
I would suggest you watch the film, Lolita: The Way it Really Happened by Stanley Kubrik

[Anonymous No.7227504]

>>7227419

I disagree--I think a large part of the literary beauty of Lolita is in the structure of the narrative. HH's solipsism and the subsequent imposition of his distorted mind upon reality is what makes it so intriguing.

[Anonymous No.7227511]

>>7227419
I see what you mean, and I'd definitely agree that Lolita's strengths aren't its themes or narrative. However, untangling Humbert's web of bullshit, which you admit is there, is just what we're doing. You say that it was an act of spite, i.e., that Humbert's only killed Quilty because he stole Lolita, and while that's inarguably part of it, I don't think it's overthinking to suggest that there's more to the act. His reaction to Lolita wasn't just "ugh this hoe old af"; he cried and offered her all his money and was angry at the condition she was left in. He, to some degree, realized the gravity of what had happenned to Lolita, now that she was a person rather than a temptress. This, imo, caused him to shift the blame onto Quilty, thus giving him moral justification for killing the dude who took away his nymphet.

[Anonymous No.7227517]

>>7227470
he's talking to a theoretical jury for when his trial comes up (but he dies before)

[Anonymous No.7227519]

>>7227504
Lmao devin you gay af

[Anonymous No.7227574]

>>7227359
>>7227338
>le reading lolita in public meme

[Anonymous No.7228998]

>>7227232
i'm still reading that but being as he's telling the story in retrospect it doesn't seem that way at all. he constantly tries to justify his sexual deviancy through explanations like "nymphets". he also always talks about how irresistible he is physically which i find really funny. Doesn't seem to redeem himself at all