Reflection of lolita
Nabob develops this idea in his novel Elliot, in which the protagonist Humbler Humbler shows his longings and his seeking of control over time throughout his life story. In this story, Nabob also implies that lives are restricted by time; any seeking of the past time will fail at last and bring frustration. Whenever Humbler's dreams, or Ideals of seeking the past, conflict with the reality of the time restrictions, anguish emerges, and escalates Into his tragic end of life.
Actually, Humbler Is deeply affected by his unfulfilled relationship with his nouns lover Enable, which results in his seeking of young girls and his pursuit of controlling over time. This unforgettable remark in Humbler's mind not only leads to his obsession with Elliot, a young girl who serves as another Enable for Humbler, but also leads to his fear and anxiety of the elapsing of time throughout his lifetime. Humbler has always been hoping to slip the leash of time with the help of his imagination and creation, either going back to the beautiful memories in the past, or staying immortal without aging.
However, he is never in control when time flows by; hush, he suffers from the Impossibilities of achieving his Ideals. Although Humbler tries to govern the destiny by himself and wishes to stay at one exact moment, he cannot achieve his desire In reality. After all, Humbler Is always the prisoner In the cage of time, and so are all human beings. Time has a more exceptional value for Humbler than for normal people because Humbler has special interests in young girls, or in other words, he is a pedophilia.
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During his life of encountering these young girls, Humbler suffers because of the restrictions on the age of the girls that FLT the requirements of nymphets. Nymphets, as he describes, are "nymph's... Creatures" that are "between the age limits of nine and fourteen" (p. 16). In this case, time, which may contain different values for different people, is much more valuable and significant to Humbler than to ordinary individuals for the reason that nymphets can only retain their identity for six years.
Humbler simply wishes to be "[left] alone in [his] pubescent park, in [his] mossy garden," which Is filled with his desires and appreciation for the nymphets. Regardless of the reality, Humbler has an Ideal of keeping the nymphets "play[long] round [him] forever," as well as "never grow[long] up" (p. 21). Once again, Humbler hopes to free the nymphets from the shackles of time, and stay forever young in his which may bring him comfort, but never come true. Stopping aging is always an impossible action that human beings cannot achieve; however, Humbler holds a dream of preventing the flows of time.
He wishes to remain at the same moment, or even return to the past all the while. As a matter of fact, Humbler's interests in young girls and his actions of seeking nymphets are results from his unaccomplished memories of his childhood. Tracing to his past, Humbler's relationship with a neighbor girl, whose name is Enable, affects his later life on a large scale. Back in Humbler's childhood, Enable, the "lovely child a few months [his] Junior," and he are "madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other" (p. 2). Unfortunately, the fact that they are "unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do" leaves permanent regret for Humbler. Still, "after twenty-nine years have elapsed," Humbler views Enable as "the initial fateful elf" who used to be "on that same enchanted island of time" as he is (p. 8). The emotions that Humbler has toward Enable are extraordinarily deep and strong, as the "fierceness... [in the] premature love [can] destroy adult lives" (p. 18).
The pity of an uncompleted relationship is like a "wound... [that] remain[s] ever open," (p. 18) and accompanies Humbler for the rest of his life. Deliberately standing at the same position when his unforgettable memory ends, Humbler chooses not to leave and give up his hope of continuing his memories, even if he is aging while carrying the scar that comes from his unsuccessful relationship with Enable. Humbler himself also realizes that "the rift in [his] life in the glitter of that remote summer" (p. 1 3).
The "rift," which is set between Enable and Humbler, between his past and present, or between his ideal and reality, is the obstacle that Humbler hopes to leap over. However, he is hopeless when he is in the cage of time, and the unavoidable aging makes his childhood that remains on the summer seashore and in the backyard garden unachievable. Nonetheless, Humbler is obstinate with his desire to escape the cage of time; he starts to fight the powerful fact with his imaginations and creations. Since the time that Enable dies, Humbler starts his seeking of another "Enable," which ends up with his obsession of Elliot.
Elliot, the objectified Enable, who is actually not a real person but a symbol of Humbler's childhood, is served as a satisfaction and remedy of his uncompleted experience with his former Enable. Just as Humbler confesses in the novel, he "surrenders to a sort of retrospective imagination," which causes his "maddeningly complex prospect of [his] past" (p. 13). So deeply the memories affect Humbler that he is "convinced... In a certain magic and fateful way Elliot began with Enable," when he tries to "analyze his] own cravings, motives, actions and so forth" (p. 4). Elliot, who has "the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bard back, the same chestnut head of hair" as Enable does, which cannot hide "from the gaze of [Humbler's] young memory," is "the same child" as Enable in Humbler's memory (p. 39). Humbler comes up with the hallucination that he has "fondled... The Juvenile breasts" of Elliot and "kissed granulated imprint left by the band of her shorts" on the "last mad immortal day behind the 'Roaches Roses" when he first meets Elliot in the rented house (p. 39).
From the descriptions of his feelings, it is inferred that Humbler sees Elliot, the daughter of his landlady, as a substitute, or a replicate of Enable in his to suck in every detail of her bright beauty' which he "check[s] against the features of [his] dead bride" (p. 39). Later, the "nouvelle Elliot," which is "[Humbler's] Elliot," tends to "eclipse completely her prototype" (p. 40). Just as Humbler states, he "[has] fallen in love with Elliot forever," but the word forever "refer[s] only to [his] own passion" (p. 65). In other words, Humbler's perpetual love toward Elliot is based on "the eternal
Elliot... [that] reflected in [his] blood," but not the actual figure existing in reality (p. 65). Indeed, Just as he states later in the story, "the attraction... Of pure young forbidden fairy child-beauty' does not belong to "immaturity," but from "security... Where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised" (p. 264). It is the feeling of security in filling the gap, or leaping the rift, which is like "the great rosemary never-to-be-had," (p. 264) that drives Humbler to seek his nymphets with great passion.
Moreover, the impossibility of Humbler satisfying is desire, which is as dreary as a withered rose, creates the "miserable memories" for Humbler throughout his life (p. 1 3). In short, Elliot is Just a name for a image that Humbler creates. Humbler's possessiveness of Elliot is his attempt to seize his childhood memories regardless of time restrictions. Not surprisingly, the same rule of aging is applied to Elliot as well. As Humbler knows well to himself, Elliot will "not be forever Elliot" (p. 65). "She [will] be thirteen on January 1," and "in two years or so she [will] cease being a nymphet and would turn into a young girl'... En, into a 'college girl" (p. 65). No one can stop the pace of aging no matter how desperate he is, and neither can Humbler. The result of the endless pursuit of stopping the time is a "horror of horrors" that rises inside Humbler. The pain of the incapability of preserving a nymphet again makes Humbler suffer. This Elliot, who is only a twelve-year-old girl when Humbler marries her mother and becomes her stepfather, that Humbler can "touch and smell and hear and see" has "iliac creates... [that] [have] not yet flared," and "a strident voice" as well as "the rich brown hair" (p. 65).
However, she will not be the same Elliot after several years, and will "lose forever" (p. 66). Constrained by the cage of time, Humbler will never have Elliot as a nymphet forever; however, Elliot "will always be the girl [he] [is] infatuated with... Even if she has grown old and not that innocent anymore... In [his] dreams". In his own world of dreams Humbler finally seeks the eternally of youth. Despite the great influence Humbler's past acts have on his obsession with nymphets and Elliot, his past also affects Humbler in his present life. Not a day is easy without anxiety and fear for the flow of time.
The fear starts to emerge when Elliot is going to camp and leaving home for two months. For Humbler, the lost of time that "two whole months out of the two years of her remaining nymphs" makes it unaffordable and raises pain (p. 66). Later, after the death of Charlotte, Humbler sets off on a long car trip around America taking Elliot with him. In order to keep Elliot with him and possess her during her short nymph's years, Humbler moves frequently from one village to another and stays at hotels for most of the time, trying to avoid the expectedness of his immoral relationship with Elliot and the attention room the police.
Moreover, during the trip after Elliot leaves her school, Humbler starts to have thoughts that are "more than hallucinations" (p. 217) because he is "Jealous of every male [Elliot] [meets]" and acts "queer[lay]" because of the worries Elliot from other males, including her classmates from school, that he tries to cut every possible way for her to access males, which is the normal thing that a growing teenage girl does. Humbler hopes to keep Elliot as his nymphet, who will not grow older and only belongs to him, by keeping her from ordinary behaviors and interactions with society that normal girls have.
Despite the illustrations above, there are many more details that are described in the novel that reveal the "anxiety' and "pain," which are raised from the restrictions of time, that Humbler suffers. The influence of Humbler's anxiety about time, and his failings to prevent the normal things that happen when time flows, make his life miserable and intense, and is mostly likely to cause Humbler to go mad and die from heart disease in Jail. However, Humbler, who portrays himself as a poet, is a romantic dreamer who fights against reality.
When the reality of time impedes the way to his ideal world, Humbler finds another way, not through imagination but literature, to fulfill his desire. During his time in Jail, Humbler writes the novel Elliot to mourn for the loss of his love. The shallow purpose of Humbler writing the novel is to "make [Elliot] live in the minds of later generations" (p. 309). Only in this literary world, where Humbler successfully achieves control over time and his lover, can Humbler finally pursue "immortality' (p. 09). Noticing that in this fabricate world exists "the only immortality... [that] [Elliot] ND [Humbler] may share," Humbler achieves the fulfillment of his desire at last. In other words, sadly enough, it will never be possible for Humbler to pursue his desire in the actual world. Looking at the novel as a whole story applying the theme of time, it provides an assumption that Elliot is the symbol of the past who embodies the most exciting and memorable Junctions in Humbler's recollections.
Besides, Charlotte and Guilty are symbols that represent the present because they are obstacles for Humbler to succeed in the chasing of his dreams. For Charlotte, her existence makes t impossible for Humbler to get close to Elliot and own Elliot as his possession. For Guilty, his intention and actions to seduce Elliot and take her away set Humbler in precautions of losing the possession of Elliot. Time is always Humbler's strongest enemy when he strives to achieve his dream of owning a perpetual nymphet.
In this way, Humbler's behavior of planning to murder Charlotte and actually murdering Guilty can be viewed as Humbler's efforts to stop time and end its flow. On the other hand, the eventual flee of Elliot, which symbolizes the loss of the past, implies the ND of Humbler's dream to escape from the cage of time. To cite one line of the poem from T. S. Eliot, "That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here. Elliot has gone and left Humbler, as well as his childhood times; time is elapsing from one second to the next, never stopping. It is inevitable that Humbler's dream of governing time will finally be disillusioned no matter how hard he tries to pursue it. In conclusion, no one can escape the cage of time, and neither can Humbler. In the cage of reality, none of Humbler's desires will be achieved; however, Humbler has achieved them eventually in his fabricate world which is full of imaginations and hallucinations.
The unfulfilled relationship with his former lover Enable, being the cause of Humbler's desire to govern time, affects his aftermath life greatly by causing fear and anxiety for Humbler. To summarize, Humbler has never succeeded in breaking the cage of time to achieve his desire to stop time slapping. Moreover, it can be inferred that maybe another perspective, it can be interpreted that desire is the only thing that is over reality, which allows Humbler to break through the cage of time with his imaginations and be an idealist of his own.
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Reflection of lolita. (2018, Oct 08). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/reflection-of-lolita/
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