A Multilateral Interpretation Of Humbert's Exile In Lolita

Lolita, an English work of the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), has long been attracting attention of the literary critics over its multidimensional nature. For its hero's abnormal immoral love affair with a girl child, Lolita has become one of the most controversial novels in the 20^th century. And at same time the hero Humbert has become the major target of literary critics, adding a unique aura to the history of western literary criticism.Surveying literary scholars' critical views on the hero, the author of this thesis has discovered that the theme of exile in Lolita has not been completely and comprehensively explored. Because of this, it is difficult for the readers to perceive the profundity of Humbert as an artistic image. By employing Edward Said's theory of exile, the present thesis tries to offer a new reading of Humbert from exile in space, exile in time and exile in language, exploring Humbert's profound literary significance and revealing Nabokov's deep perception of exile as an exiling person almost all his life.In Said's opinion, exile is a state of terminal loss of home. And it is also a process of pursuing home because the permanent homecoming complex makes the exiling person obsessed with longing for homecoming. But the efforts of home returning or home rebuilding are useless. And it is doomed for the true exiling person to be forever homeless and wandering. For the exiling person, home can be both a realistic one and a spiritual one. Therefore, exile refers to realistic and spiritual homelessness. At the same time, exile, no matter it is realistic or spiritual, is essentially a state of soul's wandering. In Lolita, Humbert's spatial exile, temporal exile and linguistic exile artistically reflect his homelessness both realistically and spiritually, which manifests his soul's wandering.Chapter 1 explores the literary significance of exile in Lolita. The author first analyzes the writers' motivation of dealing with literature of exile, ways of literary expression of exile and the revelation of the motif of exile. And then she focuses on investigating the inner link between the theme of exile in Lolita and Nabokov's personal exiling experiences. This famous work by Nabokov shows that Humbert's three-dimensional exile is essentially soul's wandering.Chapter 2 investigates Humbert's exile in space. His restless moving witnesses his instable state of homelessness as an exiling person. And his living in between attests to his longing for homecoming to Europe and reflects his unsettled state in America. Humbert's longing and pursuing of his spiritual reliance of his first childhood love is the reason that makes him realistically homeless. Thus, his spatial exile discloses his inner state of soul's wandering.Chapter 3 analyzes Humbert's exile in time. Owing to his spiritual relying on his childhood love, Humbert takes childhood in the past as his temporally spiritual home while he can only exile in the prison of the present. Homecoming complex compels Humbert to indulge in the past. And his imprisonment in the present proves that he can never return to the spiritual home of his childhood.Chapter 4 deals with Humbert's exile in language. The absence of mother tongue indicates the loss of cultural identity. Humbert lives in the alien foreign land of America, exiling in the language of the others. He cannot retrieve his cultural identity in the others' cultural vehicle of language. Therefore, his soul can only wander permanently in the alien language.In the end, this thesis concludes that Humbert's threefold exile implies Nabokov's own exiling experiences and feelings. Nabokov has written his own exiling experiences into the work of Lolita. By portraying Humbert's exiling life from the three levels Nabokov discloses the essence of exile as soul's wandering and conveys his concern for the condition of man's soul. That is why Lolita is so impressive and affecting.