Lolita

Love, passion, lust, these emotions run unrestrained throughout humanity's psyche. While we may revel in their pleasures, pine at their losses, and scorn the lack of control, these feelings and desires are as much a part of the human experience as breath and food. Vladimir Nabokov's character Humbert Humbert, being human and thus in possession of these uncontrollable desires, brings the reader a rather vivid and culturally taboo desire. Which in his description of Annabel and Monique and his meeting with Lolita, we see that his desires are not subject to him, more so the other way around.

From the beginning Humbert is lost to his desires, Annabel is his first described encounter with this beast. While he is a child him being sort of swept away is rather understandable. Having never felt emotions as he did he quickly becomes submerged in his relationship with Annabel, he says "these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water (...) could bring relief"(9). Her early death and the sudden loss of that part of his life could possibly explain his interest in prepubescent or near pubescent girls. He even thinks so himself "I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel."(10)

Before he describes his relationship with the Parisian Monique he goes into detail about how he feels about his compulsion for the underaged. "While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body's every plea." (14) this is an almost outright declaration of his division, he then goes on to say "One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic."(14) Then as the rest of the story unfolds its clear that his desires have won out.