Humbert is an asshole and whatnot...

Who are we to judge? I hear that all too often on this campus. I am sorry to all I offend with this post, but I was raised to believe that there is right and there is wrong. These two ends of the spectrum are of course (as we have discussed before) often confused and intertwined and even blend together to form some neutral shade, but they still exist. In living in a society we all agree to a social contract. I am sure we are all aware of Hobbe's social contract in which according to Thomas Hobbes:

"human life would be "nasty, brutish, and short" without political authority. In its absence, we would live in a state of nature, where we each have unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten our own self-preservation; there would be an endless "war of all against all" (Bellum omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, free men establish political community i.e. civil society through a social contract in which each gain civil rights in return for subjecting himself to civil law or to political authority."

Upon entering this social contract we agree to remain more or less civilized for the greater good of society and for individual protection against outsiders and our own countrymen. Therefore, the right to rape little girls is given up in order to maintain some semblance of civility and cut down on the "nasty, brutish, and short." If we roll over on our backs and say "Oh, his morality is not society's morality...he can't be blamed." Then we are giving up every little girl's right to innocence and normality.

Humbert Humbert gave up his right to freedom when he violated the social contract. Humbert was not moral, correct or even pitiable. Nabokov never intended that we sympathize with him nor did he intend that we hate him. He merely wanted to create the perfect story, a fairytale in which he satirized everything that we laymen hold dear in our interpretation of a microcosm. Fuck you Nabokov.