Lolita

Throughout the novel, Humbert Humbert is often a highly unreliable narrator, describing events in a way that reflects his own perception, biases, and delusions. Often, he employs obvious hyperbole in his narration. When describing his adolescent relationship to a girl named Annabel Leigh, for example, Humbert writes: 

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do.

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Humbert Humbert is a classic example of an unreliable narrator. At various points, he manipulates the narrative in order to present himself in a more flattering light despite his long-term abuse of a young girl. Just as often, his own distorted perception colors the narrative, suggesting self-deception. His unreliability is emphasized in a passage where he describes what he considers to be the “mutual” nature of his attraction to Lolita: 

All at once I knew I could kiss her throat or the wick of her mouth with perfect impunity. I knew she would let me do so, and even close her eyes as Hollywood teaches [...] A modern child, an avid reader of movie magazines, an expert in dream-slow close-ups, might not think it too strange, I guessed, if a handsome, intensely virile grown-up friend—too late. The house was suddenly vibrating with voluble Louise’s voice telling Mrs. Haze who had just come home about a dead something she and Leslie Tomson had found in the basement [...]

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At various points in the novel, Humbert openly acknowledges the unreliability of his own narration, casting aspects of his story into doubt. He admits, for example, that he has made errors regarding certain dates and that other memories are not so clear. After Charlotte Haze writes a letter confessing her love to Humbert, for example, he discusses his own occasional manipulation of facts and details: 

What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French). It was at least twice longer. I have left out a lyrical passage which I more or less skipped at the time, concerning Lolita’s brother who died at 2 when she was 4, and how much I would have liked him. Let me see what else can I say? Yes. There is just a chance that “the vortex of the toilet” (where the letter did go) is my own matter-of-fact contribution. She probably begged me to make a special fire to consume it.

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