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Humbert’s Confession in Lolita



Author(s)

LI Ying, XIAO Bin

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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2014.09.009

Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Beijing, China

Lolita, the Confession of a White Widow (2005) is a postmodern masterpiece by the Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov. The novel follows the tradition of confession in Western literature is alleged to be a confession made by a middle-aged white man, Humbert Humbert, in the prison before his death about his hideous crime against an innocent girl—Lolita. The whole story fits into the U-type structure of biblical stories and is also characterized of a loss-and-return pattern. While the first part of the novel is no more than a pseudo-confession since Humbert keeps trying to vindicate himself and exonerate him from the conviction of rape, the second part serves as the real confession in that the character admits his crime and is eventually forgiven by and reconciled with his victim. In this thesis, the author intends to interpret Humbert’s confession in terms of the changes in the addressees in the narrative, and changes in Humbert’s attitude toward Lolita and himself with the biblical references.

Lolita, Humbert, confession, Bible