Myopic Humbert

A man who is as self-assured as Humbert Humbert should not act dense. Throughout the entire novel readers are reassured time after time of Humberts’s intelligence. So, it seems odd that he is unable to read the clues left by his nemesis, Clare Quilty. Perhaps Humbert has poor vision which hindered his ability to piece together the puzzle. Now, the idea of Humbert’s vision being bad is never given directly, but rather indirectly. Although, we should not consider his vision bad but myopic, and when we examine the definition of myopic we learn that it means—essentially—nearsighted, shortsighted, and narrow-minded. All of which easily pertain to Humbert but Nabokov only gives us the clues of his myopia while referencing Dolores. Humbert is telling us that the reason he experiences myopia is because he was distracted by Lolita.

During the two trips that Humbert and Lolita went on he was pretty much a happy camper, with the exception of the end of the second trip when he was sure that everywhere he went he was being followed by someone. Other than that he did not notice the clues until he went back over his trip and then he noticed all sorts of evidence left by Quilty. However, Humbert still seems to be unable to plainly lay the blame all on his own shoulders. He has to drag Dolores into by letting us believe that her distracting qualities were the only reason why he did not notice Quilty sooner. Humbert would have us believe that Lolita is myopically challenged when he says:

“I had seen that kind of thing in children before but, by God, this was a special child, myopically beaming at the already remote stage where I glimpsed something of the joint authors—a man’s tuxedo and the bare shoulders of a hawk-like, black-haired, strikingly tall woman” (221).

This comes to us on a page that is graced with clues about Clare Quilty. Lolita is throwing Humbert for a loop and he does not even realize it, and since his a learned man it could be said that maybe he is embarrassed that he did not see the hints sooner. But instead of directly telling us he has to hint at it by describing Lolita’s vision as myopic when in all actuality he is the one who is shortsighted.

Once the novel has been read Humbert can be seen as somewhat predictable. By the end of the novel readers are not surprised to learn that Humbert still does not know who stole Lolita away from him and he needs Lolita to tell him. Well, we are back to myopia—believe it or not. We are aware of his shortsightedness again just after Lolita tells him that she was taken by Quilty. Humbert says:

“No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn—even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita” (278).

She is not the one who has to worry about her eyes fading into “myopic fish.” Humbert knows that it is his eyes that are doomed but, he cannot come out and admit that to anyone. This is the point of the novel where he realizes that he has been so stupid—or, perhaps, narrow-minded is a better word.

Humbert Humbert is supposed to be one of those characters that readers can relate with even though he is essentially a villain. However, it is hard to relate with him at times because he often fails to see the “reality” of things and when that happens he seems very content to place fault with other characters. In the end, poor Humbert Humbert cannot seem to outwit a man with supposedly less intelligence than himself. His comeback—a gun.