How Lolita Affected My Life

One month since reading Nabokov's classic Lolita, I posed the question 'how had my life changed directly from reading this novel?'. Apart from the obvious discussions about the book, surely there were themes or characters who had some level of affect and therefore have shown their facades through my actions or thoughts or philosophic state.

Personally the most atrocious themes have not personified themselves in my day-to-day living, nor my non-day-to-day living, although I was drawn into watching The Woodsman one night. Firstly I must self realise what has changed for me in the last month. There are the obvious things, a new job, biking being made my main form of transportation and the resulting outcomes such as tiredness, timeliness and more t words. These big changes were little to do with the reading, but a closer observation might conclude that biking is something to do with fear induced from the road trips Lolita and H,H go on.

Maybe a look at smaller subtle changes might be more appropriate. After reading this book I questioned morals, should the self indulge in thy self to satisfy ones desire? I am tempted to agree, but is it this temptation that makes me aware of the outcomes. Why does one feel guilty when they succumb to temptation? does it come from a spiritual awareness within? or is it a reaction to years of psychological damage from conservative teachings? I am justified to state that as long as ones actions only do good, least post neutral, to all people they influence that they might deem appropriate. In stark contrast to the narrator, "Unless it can be proven to me—to me as I am now, today, with my heart and my beard, and my putrefaction—that, in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, life is a joke) I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art." - Humbert Humbert.

One last thing one might think of is destiny. Throughout the book there are signs of a destiny for HH to be with a nymphet that he was designed for. From his first encounters with Annabel to the occurrences within the Hazes house where he knew it was no accident that one such object of his affection would be somehow become his and only his, and a solid example; the houses street number is 342, the room they stay in The Enchanted Hunter is 342. In my own life I feel slightly more open to destiny, if it is a possibility. For example, the job I started took no effort to obtain. I was approached by someone in need, was free to start without any issues and have enjoyed it so far. Maybe there is an underlying thread of things all working together to produce outcomes that are even romantic in the way they fit together. The final sign being a recent news article about a 13 year old boy becoming a father, link. A twisted fate that must be born from the loins of Lolita.