Blog Post #7- Responding and Reflecting

In part two of my character analysis, I will be focusing on the namesake of the story, Lolita, or more accurately, Dolores. Dolores originally comes off as an extremely innocent character, having a simple crush on the apparently handsome Humbert Humbert. H. H. sees his opportunity to get what he wants, and so manipulates him, and this seems to work, but only for a time. Dolores, at some point within the novel, becomes just as manipulative as the manipulator himself, and plays Humbert for a fool. She becomes a fairly resourceful young girl, and eventually finds happiness with a young man who impregnates her, as she ends her relationship with Humbert once and for all. It should first be noted that Dolores has changing goals throughout the story. When she first enters an intimate relationship with Humbert, she does so for the thrill, both literal and figurative. She finds it exciting to be in a relationship with an older man that she finds attractive, and is also using him as a way to see the country via a road trip across the United States. However, this thrill ends when the road trip does, and she slowly becomes more aware of what the relationship between the two characters really is to her, and at this time decides to use him as a way to find a relationship she truly wants, using her wit and the lust she knows Humbert holds for her as a means to an end. Lolita in many ways can be considered the antagonist to Humbert's protagonist. If a protagonist is someone who wants to achieve a goal and an antagonist is one who blocks them from said goal, then Dolores definitely acts as such for Humbert's goal of a long relationship with his Lolita, in which she would have his child who he would also make his lover, and so forth. In the end she is able to achieve her own goals, and break away from the toxic and unhealthy relationship that she and Humbert were in, although whether or not the relationship she next entered into was healthy either is a completely different story. Dolores was definitely one of the most complex characters, and often did not live up to her namesake of Lolita in the best of ways.