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In Lolita, we find one of the greatest characters ever created: the narrator, Humbert Humbert. As disgusting as we may find Humbert’s actions, his grace and humor at times manage to win us over. Nabokov frames the story with the narrator’s trial for murder, with Humbert addressing the readers as "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury." We therefore immediately recognize the book as an apologia, which we must keep in mind as we watch Humbert attempt to distract us from his actions. Humbert is a middle-aged European man who moves to America at the beginning of the book. From the outset, he tells us of his fascination with nymphets, a certain kind of young girl who possesses inexplicable, somewhat devilish qualities that eventually disappear following adolescence. By chance, Humbert ends up in a house with the twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, whom he calls Lolita, and immediately falls in love with her. Through the novel’s twists and turns, Humbert ends up being Lolita’s stepfather. The first half of the novel consists primarily of an explicit account of Humbert’s desires and his gradually increasing successes with the nymphet. The second half of the novel describes the details of their road trips and Lolita’s ultimate disappearance.
The novel explores the nature of Humbert’s obsessive passion, which in its own way seems to be a twisted form of love. But what makes the novel so appealing is the sense of style that Nabokov gives Humbert. Firstly, Humbert sprinkles his narration with jokes ranging from the highbrow to the downright obscene. Secondly, Nabokov endows Humbert with a language at once sublimely beautiful and tremendously playful. In one of the most exquisite introductions in all of literature, Humbert shows off his linguistic virtuosity as he describes the object of his obsession: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." Nabokov uses alliteration while dissecting the sounds of a simple three-syllable word, making language a form of play from the very beginning of the story. Humbert’s graceful use of humor and language serves as a means of distraction, prompting the reader to overlook or even sympathize with the narrator’s otherwise revolting actions. Such grace also enabled Nabokov to turn a shocking subject into a literary masterpiece.
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