On The Competition Of Sphinx Factor In Lolita

Lolita(1955),also known as the Confession of a White Widowed Male,is the most controversial work of Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov(1899-1977).In 1953,when this novel first came out,it was considered as an immoral novel because of its explicit description of sexual knowledge and abnormal love.Then,it was repeatedly rejected by many publishers,and even no one was interested in reading this novel carefully.So this novel was hidden for a long time.Later,thanks to the British Writer Graham Green’s revelation of the so-called illicit novel and discovery of its precious value,this despised novel caught the attention of researchers,who began to make comments and analyses on this novel from different perspectives and theories.While the concept of the Sphinx factor of the ethical literary criticism has provided a new perspective for researchers to analyze this novel.Professor Nie Zhenzhao points out that the Sphinx factor is an important concept for understanding literary works.Every human being has the Sphinx factor that contains human factor and animal factor,so each person is a contradictory community in which the two kinds of factors coexist.Everyone’s behavior is controlled by the human factor or the animal factor.The three main characters,Humbert,Lolita and Mrs.Haze,in the novel Lolita,are no exception.After they collided with each other in their lives,why did they do something contrary to the humanity that people could not agree with,and why did they set foot on the path of the tragic fate? These can be explained by the concept of the Sphinx factor.Therefore,this thesis will use the concept of Sphinx factor to analyze this novel.This thesis is divided into three parts.The first part is the introduction.The second part is the main text,which describes in detail the competitions and consequences of the human factor and animal factor of the three main characters in different ethical environments.The third part is the conclusion.Through the three chapters of the text to analyze the various ethical dilemmas brought by the rising animal factors to the main characters,this thesis attempts to find out the reasons why the animal factor rise to fight against human factor,and dig out the teaching significance of the novel from the final ethical choices made by the three main characters..