Lolita

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              For years, scholars have struggled to reconcile John Ray, Jr’s assertion that Humbert’s tragic tale tends “unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis” (5) with author Vladmir Nabokov’s equally forceful statement that “despite John Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow” (314). Also argued among Nabokovians is the authenticity of the final scenes involving pregnant Dolly and the murder of Quilty called into question by Humbert stating he had started Lolita “fifty-six days ago…first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion…” (308). However, more often than not, critics tend towards validating or invalidating the final scenes for various reasons without accounting for authorial collaboration between Nabokov and his narrator Humbert. Nabokov, like Humbert, exercises prestigious control over language and engages readers with an abundance of linguistic word play. As such, it is necessary to consider the context of both John Ray and Nabokov’s assertion about the moral nature of Lolita. Determining the reality of the final scenes becomes irrelevant when enacted as a means of context in which to consider the relationship between Nabokov and Humbert, and in turn, readers of Lolita.