All these influences makes the reading of Lolita, according to Miller, similar to ‘an assault on the reader’, as he has to try to form his individual judgment of Humbert Humbert without being swayed by the narrator’s rhetorical tricks or Nabokov’s continuous play of attract-and-repel in representing Humbert. is due to the way in which Nabokov skilfully alternates between representing Humbert as attractive or repulsive, and the mixed success of the rhetorical devices that H.H employs in his attempt to evoke sympathetic feelings for his figure in the reader. This essay will argue that the reader’s problematic interpretation of the character of H.H. Therefore, reading Lolita is essentially about forming judgment: What do we believe the main protagonist to be? Or to put in more Humbertian terminology: what is our verdict, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Shocked by this lenient attitude towards a rapist and child-molester, readers have felt uncomfortable and confused after finishing the novel Lolita, wondering how it is possible that, whilst reading, they almost forget how brutally Humbert exploits the orphaned Dolores Haze. Critics have argued that they could not help feeling forgiving towards the tragic, anti-heroic figure of Humbert at times, who commits a crime that would normally make them shout for maximum penalty. Nabokov’s novel has not only been controversial because of its alleged pornographic content involving a twelve-year old girl, but also because of its curious effect on the reader. The Russian born American author Vladimir Nabokov presents us with an eloquent and compelling figure in his masterpiece Lolita (1955), namely the narrator of the story, the paedophilic protagonist Humbert Humbert. It is not only real life orators who prove to be extremely powerful in their persuasion, but fictional ones as well. Throughout history, this power of words to influence the masses has proved itself time and time again - especially during the rise of fascism in Germany - and has indicated how vulnerable we actually are if not aware of the rhetorical devices the silver-tongued employ to influence our beliefs and ideas. Rhetoricians might be ‘forgetting the public good in the thought of their own interest’ and use their persuasive skills to sway the audience into a morally wrong mind-set. The gift of being a great orator can be potentially dangerous when it is employed for the wrong purposes, as the dialogue in Plato’s Gorgias shows.
The two great philosophers of this time, Plato and Aristotle, famously wrote about rhetorical qualities in their respective works Gorgias and The Art of Rhetoric, and were among the first to emphasize the power of words.
The word ‘rhetoric’ will probably lead many to think of the ancient Greeks and their studies on the practise of successful and persuasive oration. Narration and Nabokov’s Enfant Terrible: Rhetorical Strategies in Lolita This essay explores rhetorical strategies in the narration of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita (1955) with a view to the three key elements of rhetoric in the Aristotelian interpretation: logos, pathos and ethos.