By Elena Hijazi | Staff Writer

Lolita is an infamous classic novel written by the Russian author, Vladimir Nabokov that you have undoubtedly heard of. This piece of literature has brought forth many controversies yet transcends the test of time and continues being one of the most infamous crafts ever written down on paper.

I read Lolita this past summer, having known about it and its subject for a long time. I honestly did so to be a more reliable debater against it when its topic comes about in conversation having always rendered it tremendously riveting, disturbing, and a glamourized romanticization of pedophilia. I was Lolita’s number one hater before reading it.

However, I am a big advocate of never judging a book by its cover (pun intended), so I decided to give it a read and form my own unbiased and educated opinion on it. To keep it short and sweet, Lolita is about a middle-aged psychology college professor called Humbert Humbert (no, I am not kidding, that is his actual name) that has a fascination with “little girls”, or as he likes to call them, “nymphets”, specifically a young girl named Dolores, better known as Lolita. Lolita, oh, Lolita, the object of all his desires, the bane of his existence and whatnot…

Reading this book was a rollercoaster ride in all that it entails, as it did make me want to vomit and drown in self-loathing a countless number of times, wondering as to why I put myself in this situation. Initially, I clung on to my predetermined opinion about it as it truly affirmed the disgust that I had established towards it with every single gut-wrenching line. But you know what? I could not put the darn book down.

I am compelled to praise Nabokov’s writing for a short while here. He paints a canvas with his words that you could see better with your mind than you would with your eyes. He is brilliant in every sense of the word. Lolita truly is the best-written book I have yet to read. His genius shines from the way he would always stir up an emotion and a reaction from me. He makes you feel something through his writing, not necessarily pleasant sensations, but sensations, nonetheless. And is that not the reason we read in the first place? To experience the world from our seats and through the power of our minds using the same alphabets we know all too well, organized in a detailed manner by thoughtful writers? Writers such as Nabokov are the reason I read. 

 A huge aspect of Lolita that is often overlooked is the fact that it is entwined with satire. I am convinced that Nabokov did that on purpose. We, the audience, are not supposed to root for Humbert Humbert, we are supposed to see right through him, nay, make fun of him. He says the most insanely over-the-top things, he is the most disturbingly intriguing individual, not due to his complexity, but due to his horrendously, silver-tongued, perverted mind that he actually believes is quite normal.

I solemnly believe that Nabokov intended on making his readers ridicule this God-awful man, and not be sympathetic towards him at all as many people claim. The idea of Lolita is to benignly break down the character of atrocious members of society such as Humbert Humbert, by letting people inside that mind of his. A mind that is so obviously scattered with upside down neurons to the point that there is no need for Nabokov to blatantly point it out to the readers in any clearer statement.

To conclude, Lolita does not add glimmer and shine towards a heartbreaking reality that does unfortunately exist in this world, nor does it romanticize relationships between older men and young girls, and it sure as heck does not yield readers to empathize with nor normalize the existence of individuals such as Humbert. It does, however, satirically, and insidiously free the courtroom for a monstrous member of society to plead his case (“ladies and gentlemen of the jury”, as he often writes in the book), and plead his case he does, ridiculously so. Point being made, literature is subjective, and good literature raises multiple versatile interpretations alongside it. I do believe that as readers, we have a responsibility to be critical and alert so that the ideas the author was trying to deliver do not get lost in translation or get severely misinterpreted. This is my take on Lolita, I bestow it upon you with an open mind and heart.