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
Lolita makes friends with the girls in her school. Humbert enjoys their presence at the house, finding that Lolita’s attractiveness is enhanced by her having “a bevy of page girls.” One of them, Eva Rosen, he even considers to be a nymphet. Lolita’s closest friend is Mona Dahl, an intelligent and experienced girl who claims to have had a love affair with a marine. Humbert worries that Lolita may have confessed something about their relationship to Mona, from whom Humbert is always trying to learn details about Lolita’s school life.
Humbert’s worrying goes beyond ordinary sexual jealousy, or even fear that Lolita will escape. What he hates most is the idea that anyone has a perspective on Lolita other than him; that she even exists outside of his imagination. Though he is pleased by her pretty female friends, he immediately starts worrying about anyone other than himself having any kind of relationship with Lolita at all. He becomes suspicious of Mona, but also tries to use her to make sure Lolita doesn’t have anything important in her life beyond her life with him.
Themes
