2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

Main Argument

A one-sided story Throughout Lolita, it is vital to note that the story is written from Humbert’s point of view, hence it is easily deduced that Humbert Humbert ‘focalises’ the entire narrative. The term Focalisation is defined as ‘a selection or restriction of narrative information in relation to the experience and knowledge of the narrator, the characters or other, more hypothetical entities in the story world’ (Parsons, 2017). Since Humbert never includes a point of view of an outsider, the retelling of events is purely one-sided regarding his personal experiences and perception, since none of the other characters from the novel are ever consulted to confirm any part of the story. Hence it is impossible for Humbert’s story to be completely unbiased and accurate therefore giving the reader strong reason to doubt his story and deem him unreliable. Although none of the characters are cited directly in the story, Nabokov cleverly integrates the use of indirect speech in order to try and deliberately attempt to trick the reader into thinking there is evidence of an outsider’s opinion, when really this is not represented at any time throughout the novel, as these views are always influenced by Humbert’s perception. ‘Indirect speech introduces an element of formal distancing between the reader and the depicted events’ (Barry, 1994). There are countless examples of this throughout the text, best exemplified by Humbert describing himself through Dolores’ eyes as “a great big handsome hunk of movieland manhood” (Nabokov, 1955) (p42). However, there is no evidence proving that Lolita ever thought this of Humbert, only suggesting that Dolores found Humbert’s appearance extremely attractive and this is something for which Humbert cannot be blamed. Humbert presents Dolores as having an active, initiating role in

3