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About the Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Discussion category
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2
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84
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December 26, 2025
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According to Humbert, Lolita initiates their first sexual encounter, yet later he admits that Lolita sobbed in the night. Do you think that what began as a game for Lolita became an inescapable reality or has Humbert been lying to us from the first?
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20
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372
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December 26, 2025
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What makes Charlotte Haze so repugnant to Humbert? Does the author appear to share Humbert's antagonism? Does he ever seem to criticize it?
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11
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58
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December 26, 2025
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Humbert is not only Lolita's debaucher but her stepfather and, after Charlotte's death, the closest thing she has to a parent. What kind of parent is he? How does his behavior toward the girl increasingly come to resemble Charlotte's?
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11
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79
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December 26, 2025
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We also learn that Humbert is mad – mad enough, at least, to have been committed to several mental institutions. Is his madness an aspect of his sexual deviance or is it something more fundamental? Can we trust a story told by an insane narrator?
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11
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47
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December 26, 2025
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Humbert's confession is written in an extraordinary language. Is this an extension of Nabokov's own language or is Humbert's language appropriate to his circumstances and motives? What does Humbert's prose hide, and where does it reveal?
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8
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38
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December 26, 2025
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Can Humbert ever be said to "love" Lolita? Does he ever perceive her as a separate being? Is the reader ever permitted to see her in ways that Humbert cannot?
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7
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66
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December 26, 2025
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In the early stages of his obsession Humbert sees Lolita merely as a new incarnation of Annabel. In what other ways does Humbert remain a prisoner of the past? Does he ever succeed in escaping it?
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5
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32
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December 26, 2025
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Among our early clues about Quilty is his resemblance to Humbert. How does Quilty conform to the archetype of the Doppelgänger? Does he represent Humbert's evil underself or his higher nature? What sort of double is Quilty?
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5
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36
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December 26, 2025
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Lolita abounds with games. How does the novel itself resemble a vast and intricate game? Is Nabokov playing with his readers or against them? Do its game-like qualities detract from its emotional seriousness or actually heighten it?
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5
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37
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December 26, 2025
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Why might Nabokov have chosen to begin his novel with a forward by an outside observer? What is the effect of knowing that the narrative's three main characters are already dead–and, in a sense, nonexistent, since their names have been changed?
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5
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31
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December 26, 2025
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Having plotted Charlotte's murder and failed to carry it out, she dies through a bizarre accident. Where else does fate makes an intrusion on Humbert's behalf? When does fate conspire to thwart him? Is Humbert in a sense guilty of Charlotte's death?
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5
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29
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December 26, 2025
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What does art offer Humbert and that sexual passion cannot? Is this aesthetic appeal merely the mask with which Humbert justifies his perversion, or is the immortality of art the thing that Humbert has been seeking all along?
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5
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48
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December 26, 2025
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Is all of Lolita the monologue of a pathological solipsist who is incapable of imagining any reality but his own or of granting other people any existence outside his own desires?
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4
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37
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December 26, 2025
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Why might Nabokov have chosen to name his protagonist "Humbert Humbert"? Does the name's parodic double rumble end up distancing us from its owner's depravity? Is it harder to take evil seriously when it goes under an outlandish name?
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4
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56
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December 26, 2025
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Humbert attributes his pedophilia (or "nympholepsy") to his childhood romance with Annabel. How far can we trust this explanation? How do we reconcile Humbert's reliance on the Freudian theory of psychic trauma with his disdain for psychiatrists?
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3
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15
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December 26, 2025
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How does the character of Lolita combine mythology and entomology? What are some of this novel's themes of enchantment and metamorphosis as they apply both to Lolita and Humbert, and perhaps to the reader as well?
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2
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16
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December 26, 2025
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Quilty makes his first onstage appearance at The Enchanted Hunters, yet rumors and allusions precede him. Does the revelation of Quilty's identity come as a surprise? Is it the true climax of Lolita? How does Nabokov prepare us for this revelation?
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2
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22
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December 26, 2025
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Humbert Humbert is an émigré. To what extent is the America of Lolita an exile's America? In what ways is Humbert's foreignness a corollary of his perversion? Is it possible to see Lolita as Nabokov's veiled meditation on his own exile?
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2
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21
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December 26, 2025
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How does Humbert's marriage to Valeria foreshadow his relationships with Charlotte and Lolita? How does the revelation of Valeria's infidelity prepare us for Lolita's elopement with Quilty? Why does Humbert respond so differently to these betrayals?
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2
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11
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December 26, 2025
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Why might Nabokov deploy coincidence so liberally in this book? Is it a convenient way of advancing plot or does it call the entire notion of a "realistic" narrative into question? How does coincidence tie in with Nabokov's use of literary allusion?
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23
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December 26, 2025
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