Week of 10/14: Key Passages - the conclusion

In class, in groups, we will discuss the most important parts of the book's ending in light of the tensions we've established. Your post should touch on all three parts as well:

1. Losing Lo. Part Two: Chapters 18-20.
2. Finding Lo. Part Two: Chapters 27-29.
3. Killing Quilty. Part Two: Chapters 33-end.

Also read (for discussion Thursday), two articles on Lolita (print out and bring to class): "The Road to Lolita" and "In Search of Aesthetic Bliss." Your post for Thursday (due Wednesday) should touch on these articles, relating them to your theme (if you have one). Both are posted on Blackboard under "Resources."

More Lolita puzzles:
1. What is the color most frequently associated with Lolita?
2. If Lolita were a game, what is Humbert's fatal move?
3. There are many passages in which Lolita's appearance is compared to that of a boy? How would you interpret this?
4. Humbert cries out in a strange passage that he fears water above all else. A reference here appears to be to a section from Eliot's The Waste Land - "Death by Water." And the confrontation with Quilty contains a reference to "Gerontion." What do Lolita and The Waste Land have in common thematically, if anything?
5. A "swoon" is a way of becoming insensible to reality; and a "haze," mentioned throughout the book, is another state of unawareness. What are other ways of escaping from reality that are important in Lolita?
6. The essentially melancholy story has rhapsodic elements to the very end; Appel commented on Humbert's mix of pleasure and sorrow. How are his pleasure and sorrow connected?
7. We have noted Humbert's frequent references to fate or McFate. But, other than his judges, who is it that determines Humbert's fate? To whom could he be referring?