Response #3 Introduction/ Opening Chapter

        Through the introduction and chapters 1-10 Humbert illustrates his childhood and hypothesizes why he has such an impenetrable lust for , as he refers to them, "nymphets". Fighting guilt and his relentless lust Humbert tries to understand the root of his "sickness". Humbert's justifications are sound, if he was born in a previous time period, and pulls various examples. For instance, "Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds. After all, Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine, a sparkling girleen, painted lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson frock, and this was in 1274, in Florence, at a private feast in the merry month of May" (19). 

        I think his infatuation with these nymphets stems from the crippling love he experienced with Annabel, at the age of 9, because of the intensity he experienced as a boy, he chased that intensity as an adult, believing his craving could only be assuaged by another girl the same age as Annabel.
        His sexual sights did not mature as a result of this. Only achieving the same intensity with a prostitute, a matured nymphet, one can understand by Humbert's description why she was the only young woman to satisfy his hunger. Nabokov writes, "She came hardly up to my chest hair and had the kind of dimpled round little face French girls so often have, and I liked her long lashes and tight fitting tailored dress sheathing in pearl-gray her young body which still retained-and that was the nymphic echo, the chill of delight, the leap in my loins-a childish something mingling with the professional frétillement of her small agile rump" (21).
       This set up affects the reader in many ways; however, one in particular is most prominent. It allows the reader to humanize Humbert, regardless of his predatory instinct, and even allows the audience to root for him in his battle against these taboo feelings.