Nabokov's Nomadic Humor: Lolita

Though an extensive body of scholarship has characterized both Humbert Humbert and his author, Vladimir Nabokov, as exiles, an examination of humor in Lolita situates both figures in the more detached position of nomads. Humbert does not experience the exile's desire for a return to his homeland. Instead, his repeated use of incongruity-ambiguity humor consistently places him outside of two or more juxtaposed systems of discourse, in a position to constitute their meaning rather than be constituted by it. Though Nabokov holds this freedom of consciousness as his highest aesthetic ideal, the power over meaning-making that Humbert cultivates through his use of humor allows him to justify his violation of Lolita. In this way, Lolita is a penetratingly moral novel that dramatizes the dark consequences of human beings' freedom of thought.