blog




  • Essay / The Study of Rhetorical Means in Lolita

    In this brief essay, I will draw on Lolita to demonstrate how VladimirSay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayNabokov uses the techniques of rhetoric to create an explanation of the female body, encapsulated in the characters of both teenage girl Lolita and her eldest, less nubile mother, Charlotte. In the novel, we, the readers, are presented with the spectacle of a man confronted with the terrible truth of his own existence: that he has reached a point of no return in his life and that he has no one to love. other than himself. to thank for this problem. It was his fascination with women as sexual objects and with his own sexuality that led him to this point. Nabokov is said to work hard to purge his narrator's voice of all but all-powerful and deeply concerning commitment. Nabokov makes his narrators both commentators and participants in the plot and action of the story. The almighty commitment at the heart of Lolita is Humbert Humbert's commitment to his own sexual and erotic passions and urges. In the name of these passions and these impulses, he is ready to sacrifice everything, even financial security. Nabokov believes in the ironic interest and poignancy of self-destruction destined for a man. Thus, what we see in the character of Humbert Humbert is a feeling of detachment from the action that surrounds him; even the discovery of his infidelity and desire for a teenage girl by his wife (who coincidentally is the mother of the child in question) does not penetrate the shell created by his self-centered determination to get what he wants. While we know that he has and will continue to go to great lengths to gain his Lolita's physical and emotional attention, we also recognize that even as he tells us the story, he distances himself from his ugliest and most sordid ramifications. a story about how a man's sexual preoccupation with a teenage nymphet destroys his self-esteem and his life. Stories of this type can be considered allegories. Allegories are inherently analytical narratives that preserve conventional distinctions between the real and the imagined, and which also demonstrate that the line separating these two constructs is perhaps much less well defined than we would like. We have known since the beginning of Lolita that Humbert Humbert is a man dedicated to self-preservation. He married a rude and brutal woman only because as a husband he will be financially secure. He tolerates this woman's abuse and contempt because, in a strange way, she gives him control; she recognizes that there is something superior about her husband, and although she treats him poorly, she also flatters his self-image. When she realizes that her attraction to her daughter, Lolita, has become a reality and not an abstract, she must die and he must be free. Humbert was encouraged by Lolita, who undoubtedly finds the attention of her mother's lover to be itself a form of coming-of-age. Lolita, who also rejects her mother, allows Humbert to fulfill his fantasy because it suits him; like her mother, she sees this man as a means to an end. However, unlike her mother, she will not always be ready to accommodate his demands, and will end up rejecting him, caring little for his pain. Humbert is, in essence, a man who sees himself as an actor, but in reality as a member of the audience. Nabokov himself made this point about his character. He did not find Humbert sympathetic and did not respect him either. He feltOn the contrary, he had created in this character a model of all men who allow passion to become more important than self-awareness. Nabokov also wanted to create a character who could become a symbol of man's preoccupation with his own sexuality; and in this he succeeded greatly. In fact, although he wanted to present Humbert as an aging Don Juan with a penchant for little girls, he also managed to create in the character of Lolita a stereotype of young girls who know they are attractive to older men. aged and capitalize on this attraction (Nabokov 312). Interestingly, Nabokov stated that he wrote this novel literally to “get rid of it” (Nabokov 311). One suspects that this is indeed the case for many writers, who find themselves creating characters from some experience in their own lives, and then writing a book to put those characters in their fictional place. In Lolita, Nabokov makes Humbert reveal that he, despite the intolerable nature of his marriage and the pain of losing Lolita, had managed to be happy. In fact, despite all the suffering and humiliation of his affair with Lolita, Humbert claims to have placed himself "beyond happiness", and on a plane where sensual experience is the only reality. It is a state of “oculated paradise” (Nabokov 163). Heaven may therefore well mean that all standards of appropriate and decent behavior must be abandoned. Humbert also tells his reader (once he has lost Lolita and his "paradise" is an empty house) that he has no remorse. For example, he states: “I see nothing else to treat my misery than the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art” (Nabokov 283). One of the most delightful aspects of Lolita is seeing Humbert almost defend himself. Throughout the boom, we keep hearing that the passion of his involvement with Lolita is so strong that he couldn't resist her attractions. He chooses, very deliberately, to risk everything so that a nymphet remains a child, remains attractive as only a young woman can be, and remains interested in him. When he sees Lolita again, now pregnant and fulfilled after an absence, his attraction ends. He may feel some remorse, but in no way does he think he should be held responsible for stealing his childhood and innocence. Even then, he gives the impression that she was as much a partner in their escapades as he was. Lolita and her mother seem almost incidental to the male stories or characters. It could of course be argued that Lolita, as the fixed object of Humbert's somewhat inexplicable passion for a young girl, is very important in the story and in the development of Humbert's egocentric analysis. In fact, what emerges from a careful reading of the novel is the feeling that Lolita is more of a symbol than a reality. We noted above that once she is no longer a nubile nymphet, much of her appeal is lost in Humbert's eyes. We must suspect that what made her attractive in the first place - pure sexual reaction aside - was that she was forbidden; it is suggested that the relationship borders on incest, and that is completely forbidden fruit. There's also the fact that Lolita has a way of putting her mother in her place and gaining some control over the marriage. Whatever the case, we must ultimately conclude that Lolita mattered very little to Humbert. What mattered was his own sense of fulfillment and pleasure. In Humbert's case, he managed to escape an unhappy and loveless marriage to an unattractive and overbearing woman, find temporary passion with a desirable young girl, and escape that relationship as well. He suffered some pangs of.