The Character Narrator also changes how he refers to himself quite a bit! He goes from addressing himself in first person to third person. He refers to himself as :
- Mr. Humbert
- Humbert Humbert
- Humbert the Cubus
- Edgar H. Humbert
- Humbert the Hound
- Dying Humbert
- Humbert the Hummer
- Humbert the Humble
- Humbert the Horse
I don't understand it yet but I am noticing it is strange and again, all I can hope is that at the end there will be a reveal that it all has more meaning.
Some things I questioned in the text:
"...Oh, that I were a lady writer who could have her pose naked in a naked light,"
He wishes to be able to reveal her with his words, in a way a woman could write them. He wished to see the nakedness, but I feel it is more. I feel that he is saying he is stuck with a man's explanation of Lolita, where a woman could reveal her more freely because of an intimacy that could be shared between woman and woman. I felt this was one of those "is not," moments, where he is expressing he is a writer who can describe her but that there is a place he is not able to get to because of his gender.
A second time he attempts to describe Lo: "Changeful, Bad-Tempered, cheerful, awkward, graceful with tart grace of her coltish subteens, excruciatingly desirable from head to foot (All New England for a lady writer's Pen" He is driving home his inadequacy to describe her. His longing is so great that he can't see past it. |
"Mr. Uterus [I quote from a girls' magazine] starts to build a thick soft wall on the chance that a possible baby may have to be bedded down there" The irony of the phrase, we know he is going to attempt to "bed down a baby" before that bed comes. He is interested in girls before menstruation begins. Which strikes me as odd the many of times he uses the image of a bed. He moves into the house and notices a Sears truck(he doesn't say Sears but I know the address) bringing a new bed to the neighborhood. When he leaves the neighborhood another new bed is being delivered, also from Philadelphia. |