Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lolita, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Perversity, Obsession, and Art
Suburbia and American Consumer Culture
Exile, Homelessness and Road Narratives
Life and Literary Representation
Women, Innocence, and Male Fantasy
Patterns, Memory and Fate
Summary
Analysis
Humbert Humbert envisions himself repainting The Enchanted Hunters’ dining room to suit his erotic fantasies. He imagines murals depicting violent tropical animals, colorful foliage, a suburban scene, a slave child, a summer camp, and a lake with a fire opal in its center.
Humbert projects the exotic images that populate his fantasies upon his mundane surroundings. Because of Lolita, even the sleaziest motel becomes—for Humbert—a vivid, tropical paradise. In the same way, Humbert’s sleazy pedophilia is reinterpreted—by him—as an aesthetically profound experience.
Themes
