A Postmodern Interpretation Of Nabokov’s Mirror-Reality Complex In Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born American writer, is widely recognized as one of the most outstanding novelists and stylists in the20th century, as well as a representative of the postmodern literature. Denying the existence of a single and unchangeable truth, postmodernism reflected in literature as a whole is a welcoming gesture to all the possibilities of explanations, realities, uncertainties and paradoxes. This postmodern perception of truth and reality as uncertain and multiple is favored and employed by Nabokov in his works. Regarding novels as art works fabricated with imagination and creativity of the writer or artist, Nabokov claims that the creator alone can dictate the fate of all his characters and take responsibilities for the stability and truth of the private world of art created in fictions.In his works as The Defense, The Aurelian, Despair, Lolita, The Eye etc., various heroes or anti-heroes wearing different overcoats are trapped in the same predicament-trying to use their imagination to devise a reality of their own while living in the reality of everyone else, which they contemptuously regard as illusion. In imposing their self-created reality on the surrounding reality, the named illusion, their self-created realities always turn out to be illusory and disastrous. The tension between the created mirror-illusion and the genuinely experienced reality can hardly relax, which can be best seen in Nabokov’s most controversial novel Lolita. In this novel, Humbert Humbert, frustrated in childhood love, fabricates a delicate and beautiful net of illusion with nymphets. Insisting on the reality of his illusion, Humbert tries hard to materialize it through many elaborately formulated tricks and finally comes to know all the efforts are useless, as what he has loved is not the Lolita of flesh and blood, but a beautiful dream and illusion he creates. The bubbles of illusion breaking out. the irrevocable harm brought by Humbert to people involved in his illusion multiplies. Contrary to readers’ expectation of any type of moral judgments upon Humbert. Nabokov characterizes this divided and complex figure to be both heinous and pathetic This thesis consists of four chapters. The introduction part contains the plot summary and literature review of Lolita. Starting with the perspective of postmodern literature, this thesis analyzes the mirror-reality subject in Lolita to better readers’ knowledge of Nabokov the writer and his work Lolita. Chapter One talks about postmodern literature in general. The skeptical attitude postmodern writers hold toward reality or truth is reflected in literature at the time. Reality is no longer constant and reliable, as individual experiences and activities can also be cheating and unreal. Chapter Two analyses Nabokov’s aesthetic proposals on creation supporting his fascination with the mirror-reality subject. Declaring fictions as art works, Nabokov experiments with all possibilities to create an aesthetic effect even in his most tragic stories. Although Nabokov’s pursuit of total freedom as a liberal thinker can be rarely paralleled in his time, and his hatred of any categorization is never a secret, he shares the same idea of reality as subjective and changeable with postmodern theorists. Chapter Three is mainly about the mirror-reality subject in Lolita. Metaphors of mirrors are employed to imply self-entrapment and imprisonment which further bring about the deceptive effect of mirror-reality mix. Chapter Four elaborates the technical methods as well as the thematic concerns Nabokov favors with an eye to their contribution to Nabokov’s mirror-reality complex in Lolita. Postmodern features both in technical and subject concerns are abundant in Nabokov’s Lolita. They collaborate in creating the deceptive nature and the mirror-reality subject concern in Nabokov’s works. The final part is Conclusion. Writing in a time witnessing the rapid development of science and technique greatly plaguing human’s knowledge of reality, Nabokov’s preference of mirror-reality subject is typical of postmodern writers. Putting no obvious blame or judgments on Humbert, Nabokov seems to hint that in a world full of madness and absurdities, everyone could devise his or her own artistic ways to fight against the absurdities of average reality. But the warning is you should be very wary and not get lost in either world.