The End of Lolita...

The end came suddenly, the way it does in high-tension filled movies. Humbert Humbert finally meets face to face with his rival and ends his miserable and horrific life. The scene didn't take long, although they had comparatively quite a bit to say to each other. The whole affair seems anti-climatic due to the fact that the reader already knows Humbert's mind is made up. At the moment when he is about to leave Lolita, Humbert surrenders himself to fate; a life without Lolita is no life to him. I am not quite sure why he didn't kill himself instead, although I suspect there was a quite a bit of satisfaction to gain. He, nevertheless, states that instead of a weight being lifted from him he feels more pressure on top of him after the murder. Strange, really, because it has little to do with his sense of guilt--either for having murder Quilty or for robbing Lolita of her childhood. Since there is really no redeeming quality for Humbert at the end, the reader is left with a sense of void that is not representative of whatever other emotions are evoked by the announcement of Lolita's own death at child-birth. Quilty's death seems like an endless puppet show, really, compared to other parts of the book. Everything seems like one of those special lens effects that make everything blurry and dream-like. The culmination is no end at all. One feels the books is quite a literary masterpiece and the disgressions of the narrator are all but forgotten by the end of the story. All in all, I have to recommend this book highly for its literary value and its highly experimental use of language, allusion, and stream of consciousness.