A Review of Lolita

I'd never liked literature. Too sentimental - too abstract, too unlike my love for mathematics. Too deceiving. Too humane.

I postulate you know of the story of Lolita...

"Lolita, fire of my life, light of my loins", words that marked a journey in discovering the full vigour of literature, the endless possibilities of language and an oxymoronic exploitation of beauty. Never did I know that a book that did not intend to be a tale of morals, or rightfully dictate any, would affect me. Deep. Down. Truly. Affect me.
 For one, Lolita is not an angel. She's a sexually experienced 12 year old girl, who knows how to acquire what she wishes for - even if her method involves pleasing a 40-something year old pedophile. Don't , however, dismiss that Lolita is a 12 year old girl who, after desperate attempts by the same 40-something year old pedophile, has been scraped away from any family she might've once had. Unlike Humbert-Humbert, the victimiser of the story, do not pretend to be unable to hear her sobs at night, or rid of the notion that she's a child,left alone, with nowhere else to go. Don't take his word for true - challenge his interpertation of the story, the love he can verbally produce, and place yourself in her lace-rimmed white socks. Do yourself a favour and understand the true reason why when a pregnant,merely 18-year old young woman, living on the blink of poverty, she refuses to take him, the eradicator of her life back. It's not because she's found a new amore to possibly indulge in - but because for once in her life, she has pursued and found a tiny amount of love. She may be dying - she may be ash-skinned and devoid of any material goods - she may be merely on the dawn of her life - but she's happier than she's ever been.
 I knew those facts. I was the first to acknowledge them. To clear any misconception, I'm not a hopeless romantic, not a victim of a postulated -plump-angel-creature. But the very end of the novel, the words that mark the end of the journey, the only immortality Humbert and Lolita may ever share brought me to tears. She was not his dream nymphet anymore, she had been murdered ,emotionally if anything else, by his very own hands, and yet he still had the same passion for her eerie presence. Lolita is not a love story. It's a story of passion, wretchedness and the denial of chastity. It's a tale of delusion, lust, and its consequences. The contemplation that an alternative version of such a stickysweet story is true for many prepubescent girls makes my skin crawl - yet, why am I deceived by the beauty of words?



(FYI FOR THE READER WHO REACHED SO FAR; This blog post is completely random and inane. Excuse it please, it's probably me whoring with my newfound Nabokov-esque vocabulary. A post on the origins of religion is coming up - look out for it!)