Book Review: Lolita

Review Score 4/5 Stars

Heavy spoilers abound in this review. Read at your own risk.

What is the difference between love, and obsession? Lust, and affection? Sexual attraction and that feeling of "love at first sight"? Many a man, including myself, have muddled the line between these concepts, especially when faced with a person we find desirable and close-at-hand. We think to ourselves that they're the right person for us, the one that we want to live with for the rest of our lives and consummate our love every night in fiery passion. Yet, it's often delusion and self-deception that clouds our judgement, creating fanciful fantasies that contour to this desire and longing, and if left unchecked, can cause untold damage to the object of our fixation.

Lolita is a book about a man's sexual escapade with a pubescent young teen, taken from her home and her mother to travel around the continental United States. Humbert Humbert, a self-proclaimed romantic, believes himself to be in love with Dolores Haze, and suffering from a psychological ailment that was spawned by the death of his would-be first sexual partner when they were both but very young teenagers. It's with this memory that H. H. claims that he could only be aroused by pubescent girls, whom he calls Nymphets, and that girls like Dolores, or Lolita as he calls her, were perfect for him.

Story Synopsis

He meets Dolores Haze when he's housed by Charlotte Haze, her mother, who has a sour relationship with her daughter. Here we are shown how H. H. becomes fixated on Dolores, styling himself as a handsome man, tall, and "European", visiting the girl in her bedroom and constantly talking to her whenever he can. In the recess of his mind, we're given a glimpse of the sexual perversions H. H. considers whenever he thinks of Dolores, even going so far as to think of drugging both her and her mother so that he could fondle the child.

Dolores’s mother would fall in love with him however, and gave him an ultimatum. Marry her or leave. Wanting to stay with Dolores, H. H. agrees to marry Charlotte, but afterwards, she thinks of sending her bratty daughter away just so that she could be alone with Humbert, and that dismayed Humbert to a great degree, even to go so far as to plan to murder her. However, in the end, after she discovered his diary and thus his desire for Dolores, she would die of an accident when she was run over by a car on the way to send a number of letters that would have surely blown the whistle on the man she had married.

Humbert Humbert, saved by chance, now only had one thing on his mind: Dolores. He proclaimed himself as the only legal guardian of Dolores Haze, and to this claim he acted. Just after the quiet affair that was the funeral of his late wife did he leave, in search of his Lolita in the summer camp she was attending. To get her cooperation, he lied to her, telling Dolores that her mother was gravely sick, and that he was there to pick her up. But of course, the lies did not end there.

Humbert Humbert soon takes her to a hotel, where he manages for her to agree in having sex with him with the notion (and lie) that he did not know how to “do it” while she, while on her stay in the camp, had lost her virginity to a boy. It was afterwards in the next chapter that he begins to try to justify this act to the audience, remarking about the Roman Law that stipulates that girls could be married at the age of twelve, and then saying that it was indirectly followed in most of the U.S. states while the legal age was fifteen, and was followed “everywhere.” However, he neglected to say that these required the consent of both the authorities and the parents, of which Humbert Humbert left the former oblivious while the latter was dead. And, of course, not to mention that it differs from the age of consent, which was at sixteen and above in most of the states in the United States at the time, with sole exceptions such as the distant Hawaii.

It is here that the story begins its second and last act, where Humbert Humbert and Dolores Haze begin to travel throughout the country, and where their relationship begins to slowly deteriorate. In their numerous trips, Humbert Humbert begins to see Dolores’s faults more easily, such as her bratty attitude and her tendency to make him spend money at every turn, all the while he filled her head with notions that she should regard him as her father in public and not tell anyone of their sexual affections, for if it happened to come to light, she would be taken by the government and placed in the miserable custody of the authorities.

After a year of this, however, Humbert Humbert and Dolores make an attempt at having a sedentary life by settling in the town of Beardsley, where he enrolls her in a girls-only school and closely monitors her, but this alone wasn’t enough. Jealous and paranoid of every interaction Dolores had with another male, H. H. would forever be suspicious of her, scrutinizing her every word and action to the point of breaking into her room on the notion that she was planning on leaving him. After finding hidden caches of her allowance money, his trust, what little of it there was, was completely gone. This would only escalate when Dolores insisted on participating on a play she had already rehearsed for, but Humbert Humbert fervently denied her the chance, and after a scuffle of an argument-turned-violent, Dolores flees their home. Humbert Humbert, desperate in finding Dolores, finds her talking in a payphone, and when he came to confront her, the girl suddenly wants to reconcile with Humbert Humbert, and asks him to take her to another trip. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

However, this trip would not be like the last one. Humbert Humbert, ever paranoid, begins to notice a car trailing his own everywhere they went, to which he tried to confront at times but was foiled by timely distractions from Dolores. At one point, during a stop, Humbert Humbert finds Dolores disheveled, and begins to suspect her of having sex with another man at his back, but ultimately had no proof of such a claim. Some time afterwards, she would begin to feel ill, and it had come to the point that Humbert Humbert hospitalized her, which, to him, would prove to be a grave mistake. Days later, he would attempt at a visit to Dolores’s room, only to find her gone, checked out by an uncle and taken to a grandparent, but Humbert Humbert knew better. Dolores had no other relative than his dead mother. She was gone. Taken.

After two years of living in depression, having married a young woman prone to alcoholism and moved to the city of New York, Humbert Humbert would receive a letter from a certain Mrs. Richard F. Schiller, asking him for money to support her and her husband, addressing him as if she were his father, and then comes the name she had signed at the bottom. Dolly. He would leave everything, including Rita, for his trip to Coalmont.

He would at last find Dolores Haze, now seventeen years old, pregnant and living in a clapwood house on a destitute street of the town. He had come prepared with his pistol, ready to kill the man that had taken her away from him, but Dolores manages to dissuade him, telling him that it was another man, and one that had been so unlikely. Quilty. The one that wrote the play for Dolores’s play in her school, and the man Humbert Humbert had spoken to in the hotel where he had had sex for the first time with Dolores. Distraught, Humbert Humbert pleads with Dolores to come with him, and not only gives her the money she asked for, but three thousand dollars more, and still she refused, vehement in her new life with her husband.

Travelling back to the town where it all started, Ramsdale, Humbert Humbert prepared himself for what was surely murder of the man that had taken away his own Lolita. He would find Quilty in his mansion, and Humbert Humbert, resolute in the coming violence would manage, amidst several awkward blunders, to kill the man in his own home, even as he failed to get a confession from him. It was all over, and yet to him, it was still not enough.

Afterwards, during his escape, he would let himself be captured by the police. Not by coming to them to confess his crimes, but in his bout to break all the laws man has created, after committing murder and adultery with a child. What laws did he break just so that he could be captured? Traffic laws. Then Humbert Humbert writes the last paragraphs of his book, about his contempt to capital punishment (death penalty) and his last thoughts on Dolores, of whom he hopes to live a happy life with her new husband.

My own thoughts

Lolita is an incredible book and a great work of literature from Vladimir Nabokov, but the reason I'm giving it four stars is because I found many parts of the book to be slow and dull, especially when Humbert Humbert starts to babble and ramble about small insignificant things, such as locations and whenever he addresses the reader in matters such as money or what he would do to Dolores had he been able to do this or that. For one to find themselves bored while reading is the last thing an author should achieve, and although Mr. Nabokov achieves to make them somewhat relevant and interesting, there were far too many paragraphs detailing things of no import.

That said, there were many points in the story that were incredibly peculiar, such as Humbert Humbert’s own coined term, Nymphet. He describes Nymphets as girls between the age of nine and fourteen that display sultry and sexually attractive qualities, subtly standing out from the rest of other girls their age. It's interesting because it does one thing: dehumanization. H. H. does not see these Nymphets as children or even humans, but rather, other beings disguised as them, mingling with their peers and blending in to fit in their society.

Some excerpts of Humbert's description of Nymphets:

"Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac);"

"...in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs—the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate—the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power."

These children are hidden demons because they unknowingly excite men like Humbert Humbert, arousing them and thus “absolving” them of their perversion, because it’s not their fault that they’re attracted to these girls. This way of thinking is nothing but a personal justification a person repeats to themselves just so that they can pursue these young girls without guilt, even if they know it’s immoral and illegal.

And another point that has been brought to my attention by people that have read this book: Humbert Humbert was in love with Dolores, which excused his actions.

I cannot fathom to ever have such thought. That idea was incredibly erroneous, and simply analyzing H. H.’s actions can explain why. Humbert Humbert was guided by his lust in anything he ever did with Dolores, from lying to her so that she could not report him to the authorities, to stalking her and even going so far as to make sure she never had the chance to make an escape. This was cemented during their attempt at sedentary life, where Humbert never once could trust her in what she did and what she spoke. He always suspected her, and was suspicious of any friends she made in school, and it reached the point that he began to thought that she had begun to have sex with another man. Lies, manipulation, and control, is what seemed to be Dolores’s life with Humbert Humbert.

Final Score: four out of five stars… Why?

The reason I'm giving this story four stars is because of the babbling strewn about in the story. Many times have I become bored in incredibly stale parts of the story where paragraphs covered an entire page and one could become lost in due to the unimportance of some sentences. Of course, one could argue that they're the ramblings of a man who is at the end of the line, going on about the tiniest detail in their story, but even then, the audience might still fall asleep during these page-long lulls in the story. Still, it’s the prose, the story, and the themes in it are more than worth it. I might even think that this story doubled my vocabulary!

Book Review: All Quiet on the Western Front

Review Score: 5/5 Stars

War has always been a constant in human history. We have fought for personal grievances against our neighbor. We have fought for our greed to obtain more lands and riches. We have fought for necessities and outright survival. Humanity has always found a just cause for war, where diplomacy failed and men died for a purpose only the perpetrators of conflict could truly discern and understand. Ideals and axioms flood the mind of the warrior, he who seeks glory, bravery, and blood with the idea that it’s he that fights for his country and is on a grand adventure that will fill him with experience and the spice that one needs in their life.

But war deceives.

War seduces the mind of its monger, and the young men seeking to prove themselves in the eyes of the world. Romantics and the inexperienced alike tell of its thrills and opportunities for grand exploits, and the soldiers that have trained and drilled want nothing more but to finally practice their craft. They think to themselves that war will be a quick and trivial matter, but they themselves should know better that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel about the experiences of a young man enlisted in the Imperial German Army during the First World War, or as it was called back then, the Great War. Paul Baumen, along with his friends and classmates, have willingly enlisted in the army after being encouraged by their school teacher, Kantorek. They went off to war, towards the Western Front where they were baptized by its indifference. Machine guns, artillery, mortars, and the God-forsaken trenches that characterized the motionless war cared not for them, whether they were young, old, learned and smart, or noble and good. Futures were smashed and lives were lost.

When one sends a man to war, the man with his livelihood and family can return to their own world from the years-long interruption… but can a child? Young men, fresh out of school and wanton to make their mark on their world, can return to a life after their minds have been impressed by the trials of fire? Paul Bauman asks himself and his friends this question, whether there will be a place for them in society after the war. Katczinsky, Paul’s mentor and the eldest of his friends at the age of forty, says that he has his farm to go back to, while another, one of Paul’s classmates, says that he’s willing to have a career in the army. But for the others, and Paul himself, there is not a clear answer. All aspirations and dreams are forgotten, tossed out by its inadequate quality in the field and forgotten.

It is said that in war, the youth is killed and replaced by a grown man. Modesty and shyness disappear in favor of comradeship and practicality. Where most would squirm at the thought of defecating in the vicinity of others, these men do it in groups and stay there for hours, playing cards and nattering to their heart’s content. Where most would find themselves nauseated and faint at the sight of a person that has been torn apart and scattered throughout a field, these men can discern by a mere squint how this unfortunate soldier died and the caliber of the artillery shell used to accomplish it. They become desensitized to war’s sights, smells, and sounds, and often remain aloof to the recruits that are sent to the front lines, inexperienced and highly probable to die in their first day. 

 
This culminates on Paul’s experience during his leave of absence, where he returns home to his family and find that he no longer belongs there. They receive him with warmth and tears, but Paul felt detached from his family and neighborhood; out of place and without comfort. He wishes he could tell his dying mother why he felt so alienated to his home, that he had a responsibility to his friends in the front, wanting to know how they were faring. In a way, it’s they who could only understand him, and not his family who seek to comfort him nor the people that tell him how brave he was. To Paul, they do not understand anything of it. He no longer felt attracted to the trivial matters of civilian life, to the point that his favorite books no longer entertained him as they did before he enlisted. He would look into the peaceful lives of the people of his home and feel repulsed, despite yearning for the calm that they enjoy in their day-to-day activities.

In the end, Paul wishes to have never gone on leave, for it filled him with far more uncertainty in thanks to his mother’s health, the wailing woman of whom Paul had told that her son had perished, and the peace that was absent in his life.

Trench warfare is seen as one of the most horrific types of armed conflict there is, for nothing is gained but a hundred meters of land at the cost of thousands of lives. The industrial might of the contending nations are put to blows against one another, and their manpower is forever churned to hold and advance to no real gain. Without the mobility of armored vehicles that characterized war in the remainder of the Twentieth Century, men were forced to seek the bowels of the earth to protect themselves against artillery and machine guns. The tactics of Napoleon and the lessons of the Franco-Prussian War could never prepare for the devastation and stagnation that was trench warfare, and the soldiers paid dearly for it.

Paul Bauman and his friends and comrades are forced to hide in dugouts when artillery barrages bear down on them, watching as the youngest recruits are driven mad by the incessant shelling and claustrophobia. One could not do anything but wait and hope that by sheer chance a direct hit does not bury them alive, but even then, it’s not enough to dissuade some, who rush out, and meet their maker in the field of fire. And yet, even after the quakes and the thunders seize, it’s not over, as they’re forced to rush out to their positions – now a meager collection of thrown earth and craters – and defend them against advancing storm troopers. Rest would not be found until the enemy said so.

To many, including the recruits mentioned before, these conditions would drive them mad with shell shock and claustrophobia, but to Paul, it’s another day in the Western Front, and he endures this in thanks to the friends he has. His classmates and the old-timer, Katzcinsky, have given him courage and sanity in times where none would ever be found, and it’s not only because they have coursed through four years of trench warfare together, but because they know and understand war. They can understand the difficulties of a soldier, and dispense helpful advice to those that are in dire need. Eating, sleeping, and fighting together, they’re brothers forged in fire.

But during the last years of the war, the state of the Imperial German Army was incredibly dire. Material shortages, such as munitions and food, plagued the troops, of whom were the anvil that the Allies constantly struck against with their superior numbers and materiel. One by one, Paul’s friends fell under the onslaught of the Allied nations, France, Great Britain, and the United States, up until only he and Katzcinsky were left. And yet, not even he was free from the war’s toll.

After four years of battles and seemingly worthless exploits, Paul Bauman stood alone, drained and hopeless, without his friends and without a future. He would be found dead during an unusually calm day in the trenches, his face not contorted in pain or slack by horror, but instead displaying one of pure calm, and even bliss.

This book is one of the greatest works of literature about one of the worst conflicts in human history. It serves to criticize the war, the state of the German military, the use of animals in combat operations, the needless death of untrained recruits, and the burden that the soldiers found themselves carrying. It’s clear why the Nazi government sought to ban and burn this book. It completely contradicts the image they wanted to portray war as, that there was really no point to it and caused so much damage to their nation. The Allies were portrayed much more positively than the Central Powers, more by the fact that they outproduced the Germans in materiel and food and seemingly provided better welfare to their soldiers. The war and its criticisms towards the German military would have broken the spell and revealed the ugly truths that the Nazi government did not want to disperse to the masses.

Such a book is worth reading, even if one is not a military/history nut. The characterization and the gut-punching stories and messages within are more than worth it.

Book Review: The Good Soldiers

Review Score: 4/5 Stars

The Good Soldiers is an account of a U.S. Army battalion in its deployment to Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. Led by Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, their mission in Baghdad was to pacify their assigned sectors of its eastern halve, including a southern portion of a district called Tisa Nissan Qada, or New Baghdad as it was called before. Compared to the other districts of the city, Tisa Nissan Qada was perhaps one of the most violent in Baghdad’s history, remaining lawless even during Saddam Hussein’s reign. The 16th Infantry Regiment was assigned to provide security and hope to the Iraqi people in that maze-like district, but it would instead protact into a year and a half long nightmare.

Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, the commanding officer of the Second Battalion, was hopeful in this noble endeavor. To turn one of the most violent districts in Baghdad to something resembling an American suburb, where children can go play soccer without fear of gunmen and people can cross the street without thinking if it would be their last day on Earth. And then we see this hope sway, waver, and ultimately flee as the months roll by. While the American populace saw the Iraq war with grand strategic lenses, the men could only concern themselves with the tactical, where, to them, it seemed they were on the losing side.

The entire situation seemed hopeless from their perspective, as their forward operating base kept being struck by insurgent artillery, and EFPs (explosively formed penetrator) were still being planted on the streets to strike Humvees, which dealt horrific casualties. Even after more than a year and a half of operations, the Iraqi people were still fearful. Innocent bystanders kept being killed, houses of allies were being burned down, and the insurgents in the district relentlessly attacked soldiers wherever they could.

This would reach its climax in the last month of their deployment, on March 25th. After seemingly weeks of quietness, the insurgents would launch an all out attack on positions throughout the district. Outposts, gasoline stations, and checkpoints were assaulted, and by the end of this day-long conflict, more than a hundred insurgents were left dead, while the battalion would suffer new casualties when they were days from leaving. And it was time to leave, they did not care if their FOB kept being shelled or attacked by rockets. They were done.

The stories, the losses, the heartbreak… The Good Soldiers shows how constant fear and loss can break the most trained and driven men in the armed forces. Facing a dangerous unknown that could rear its head at any moment without preamble, and maim, cripple, or kill you in one of the most horrific ways possible.

This is a book I definitely can recommend for people that want to read about the dangers of an urban insurgency and the horrible position civilians are trapped into by the opposing side.

4/5 stars, why?
The author of this book, David Finkel, can greatly convey human emotion, but coherence and chronology can sometimes fall flat. In some instances I wasn’t aware that a battle had been started until it was finished, and in some instances I wasn’t aware of a person’s motivation throughout a scene. For example, I kept asking myself why Kauzlarich was visiting an Iraqi national that was living in an abandoned school, who gave him ice cream and the both of them started watching a Vietnam movie. It was a heartfelt moment, but without context as to why they were there.