A Study Of Narrative Strategies In Lolita

Russian-born American literary master, Vladimir Nabokov is a distinctive figure in American literary history. His Lolita has won great success but Humbert the pedophile has also been a disputed character. Early criticism mainly focused on morality. Later on, artistic beauty of this work attracted most attention among critics and seldom was Humbert s inner feeling and thought analyzed. This article is going to research the narrative strategies based on Lolita s text. There are four chapters, studying respectively narrative time, narrative focalization, narrative voices and narrative plot. This thesis is going to find out how narrative strategies become Humbert s articulate defense weapon.The first chapter deals with narrative time in Lolita. The narrative time scheme indicated that love for Lolita is unforgettable through Humbert s life. The narrative time scheme features anachronism of time and different narrative durations. Anachronism is reflected by the nonlinearity of time and dates to decipher. Non-linear time is reflected by the coexistence of past and present, the appliance of internal analepsis and prolepsis. Frozen time is achieved by appliance of scene, narrative pause and different narrative frequency. Evanescent time is achieved by the appliance of summary and ellipsis.The second chapter deals with focalization strategies in Lolita. The focalization strategy brings readers to the inner most of Humbert and to think in Humbert s shoes. There are two features of focalization: dual focalization and three facets of focalization. The dual internal focalization includes both the past Humbert and the present Humbert s focalization. The focalization in Lolita is systematically constructed from the psychological, perceptual and ideological facet. The psychological facet presents Humbert s twisted cognitive road and bumpy emotional road. The emotive element on psychological facet exhibits the emotional reservation of Humbert. He keeps withholding his emotions and pretended to be a loving father. Readers could feel ridiculously frustrated emotions. The perceptual facet accentuates sensual experiences of readers and the ideological facet provided room for Humbert s nymphet theory to excuse for his love for Lolita.The third chapter studies narrative voices of Lolita. There are dramatized narrators and the implied author. Dramatized narrator Humbert defended himself and meanwhile ridiculed others. The heterodiegetic narrator John Ray gave an image of moral preacher. Contradictory to both the above voices is the effect of the implied author. By manipulating information exposure and arranging narrators, the implied author adopted a different stance from both the two dramatized narrators, imparting the non-moral nature and non-interpretative nature of literature held by Nabokov. The fourth chapter discussed plot arrangement in Lolita based on Greimas s actant theory and Emma Kafalenos Model of Narrative Sequence. The study shows that there are two features. First, actant in characters fulfills different function of characters actions, whereby the plot pattern is easily analyzed. Second, there are five circles of narrative sequence. Through an analysis of the conflicting and compliant relations between actants, especially subject and object, helper and opponent, this paper discovered that with the atmosphere built like a fairy-tale, the narrative actant of characters accentuate a love-devoted prince image of Humbert and the innocent and pure princess image of Lolita in the hand of a jealous and old witness Charlotte Haze. The princess was lured by an evil man Quilty Clare and left Humbert in the abyss of missing and sorrow. The sympathetic Humbert was made even more tragic when the narrative progression shows his cycles of failure.In conclusion, narrative strategies appliance enables Humbert the controversial character earn sympathy. Narrative time, plot, focalization and voices have worked together to achieve this effect. By adopting analepsis and prolepsis, Nabokov created a labyrinth of time in which Humbert just immersed himself in retrospection of the past, regardless of the actual liner time flowing and the exact dates. Meantime, the time duration is also manipulated regardless of its real length by adopting scene, summary and narrative pause. Some memory is also repeated to show Humbert s attachment to the past memory. The focalization draws readers nearer to the inner self of Humbert and multiple narrative voices encourage people s tendency for tolerant understanding. Characterization in Lolita accentuates the sympathetic Humbert and the innocent Lolita and makes people feel pity for Humbert s doomed failure when the narrative progression shows cycles of failure.