The following essay is the work of Julia Horsfield. Julia was Dux of FAHS in 2012 and went on to gain a Bachelor of Arts in English, French and Latin from Victoria University. She has also gained a Master of Teaching and Learning (Secondary) with Merit from Victoria. Julia is currently in her second year of teaching at FAHS.
The Outsider by Albert Camus and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov are two of the most contentious novels in literature. They both feature narrators who challenge behavioural codes but have been met with strikingly different public receptions. The narrators are central to the texts, and to the controversy, so to come to grips with these texts we will analyse the narrators, in comparison to each other, from a number of different angles: the first impressions they make, how they shape the reader’s perception of them through the narration and how the reader’s perception compares to the perceptions held by other characters and by the narrators themselves.
Humbert and Meursault succeed in challenging the reader even in their first impression. Our first impression of Meursault is formed before we even open the book. The title evokes the idea of an outsider, someone who doesn’t conform to social norms. Meursault’s opening line suggests this difference manifests in an emotional detachment. “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don’t know.” (1). The short succinct sentences convey no emotion, which may prompt the reader to ponder what the emotional landscape of his relationship with his mother looks like. The most problematic is element is his use of the term mother. “There is little warmth, little bond or closeness or love in “Mother,” which is a static, archetypal term, not the sort of thing we use for a living, breathing being with whom we have close relations… The word forces us to see Meursault as distant from the woman who bore him.” (Bloom). This is significant because our perception of the mother-son relationship underpins our judgement of Meursault throughout the text, mirroring his trial. Like Meursault, our first impression of Humbert is not formed by the man himself. John Ray Jnr, PhD introduces him in the foreword, describing the text as “the confessions of a white widowed male.” (1) He describes Humbert as having “moral leprosy” (3), painting a picture of contorted morals, possibly contagious. He describes Humbert’s “hypnotic eyes” (1), a likely metaphor for Humbert’s rhetorical power. But he then mentions his “disarming honesty” (3) which apparently permeates the text. This seems to be something of a contradiction of terms. Honesty is not something one naturally associates with hypnosis. So our initial impression is very enigmatic. Humbert’s opening line, “Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul” (7), deploys apostrophe, metaphor, alliteration, sibilance and parallel clause structures. His style is intentionally impressive; he himself declares, “you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” (7). This deft jolt administered by Humbert exemplifies his “diabolical cunning” (3) and perfectly encapsulates the challenge of the text: a narrator describing ugly crimes with beautiful language.
We can develop this aspect further by analysing our ongoing relationship with them and how they engage with the reader through the narration. A significant aspect of Meursault’s narration is that he never consciously addresses the reader. Seemingly unaware of his audience, Golomb describes his style as “parsimonious”(271). He declares: “In the first part of The Outsider the language is quite terse, background scenery is left out and the objective descriptions lack softness. Only expressions of rejection or approval are recorded without justification or explanation.” (272). But rather than shielding Meursault, Golomb suggests the narrational style has the opposite effect; it ensures a perfect correspondence between Meursault’s actions and emotions, making him a completely authentic narrator (271). He asserts that “these sentences clearly reveal that nothing is hidden…This total disclosure is mandated so that the reader will be able to track the ethos of sincerity closely, with nothing omitted”(272). In contrast, Humbert’s narration is extremely self-conscious and very deliberately crafted. This makes his sincerity perhaps the most contentious issue in Lolita. Throughout the text Humbert directly addresses his audience- the gentlemen and gentlewomen of the jury. His desire to persuade manifests itself in the rhetorical power of his narration. Humbert “possesses fantastic verbal range, depth, and dexterity.” (Durantaye:319). He deploys a variety of techniques against the reader but the most important is the saturation of the text with word games such as anagrams (Vivian Darkbloom: Vladimir Nabokov) and literary allusions including Edgar Allen Poe, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Proust, Dante and Petrach. These help Humbert transpose himself and his narrative to the world of the artist: composed only of shades of gray, devoid of codes and boundaries. This blurs the reader’s perception of him. “Nabokov graces Humbert with not only the perceptual and linguistic powers necessary for art, he lends him the credo that a true artist creates in sublime isolation and owes account only to his own genius…his most crucial and subtlest reasoning is the careful parallel he establishes between the proud creation of great art and the proud pursuit of love. By subtly describing and avidly pursuing Lolita as one would the inspiration of a work of art, Humbert tempts the reader to look at her as precisely that…We are led astray because we are offered the wrong optic through which to see Lolita-the optic of art- and we are too eager to be worthy of it to suggest that it should not here apply.” (Durantaye:320-321). Humbert hides enigmatically behind the artistry of his story, manipulating the reader to lose sight of whether they are judging an artist and his work of art or a human being and his actions.
The next question we must ask, therefore, is to what extent do our perspectives of the narrators align with the perspectives held by the other characters in their respective worlds? What challenges arise from the similarities or discordance? Humbert’s relationship with other characters offers a fairly straightforward analysis. Humbert is an extraordinary liar. He convinces Charlotte that he’s in love with her. He convinces all the parents and teachers that he is a good step-father. He deceives everyone around him except Lolita. This raises the uncomfortable question: is the reader included in this deception? Are we seeing Humbert clearly for the paedophile he is? Or is the ugly truth being obscured by his charismatic writing? In this sense, Meursault is the exact opposite to Humbert. Meursault is a character who takes sincerity to the extreme. He refuses to lie to Marie about whether he loves her, and he refuses to lie in court about his relationship with his mother. We could expect this endear Meursault to the reader because it makes him an extremely reliable narrator. However, right from the beginning of the text the reader is uncomfortably aware of Meursault’s emotional detachment; the other characters in the text are not. Strange asserts that “in the early chapters of the novel…the other characters in the novel give no indication that they perceive his behaviour as other than normal.” (36). She suggests that “Meursault is treated as a sought after friend by Raymond Sintès and a desirable fiancé by Marie Cardona.” (36). This discordance may cast doubt over the reader’s perception of Meursault. However, in the second half of the novel, having killed the arab, the prosecutor describes him as “a man whose heart is so empty that it forms a chasm which threatens to engulf society.”(98). Some readers may feel their early opinion of Meursault has been validated; others may be bewildered to now find themselves sympathising with Meursault, once again at odds with the other characters. Ellison contends that most early interpretations treated Meursault as a sympathetic character (58), but suggests that this interpretation depends on the reader “refusing to become a judge in the act of reading.” (59). Ellison poses this question: “it is advisable or even possible for the reader of a complex and challenging literary text to suspend his judgement in this way?” This is the challenge Meursault presents to the reader.
How is the reader challenged by the narrators’ perceptions of themselves? Meursault is absolutely certain of himself and his beliefs. When provoked by the priest he launches into a tirade that could well be directed at the reader: “But I was sure of myself, sure of everything, surer than he was, and sure of the death that was coming to me…But at least that was a truth which I had hold of just as it had hold of me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right.”(115). This is an ultimatum to the reader. Meursault has made up his mind about himself; the reader must finally make up their mind about him. It is a difficult judgement because Meursault is the radicalisation of the honest type who adheres to the ethics of sincerity without compromise.(Golomb:269). Sincerity is conventionally an attractive characteristic of a reliable narrator. However, “Camus demonstrates that society, which upholds the ethos of objectivity, sincerity, and honesty, is not prepared to allow in its midst one who perfectly embodies the spirit of this ethos.” (Golomb:269). Can we as individual readers overcome this, allowing Meursault’s authenticity to endear him to us as a reliable narrator, in the fullest sense of the word, even as it demands that we embrace the hypocrisy he reveals in us? On the other hand, Humbert’s perception of himself seems to change throughout the novel. Phelan suggests that “from the end of Part One on, Humbert’s own engagement with the task of narrating his experiences with Dolores leads him to see more clearly the irreparable harm he has done to her…Accompanying these changes is Nabokov’s increased use of bonding unreliability through partial progress towards the authorial norm. At the very end of the book Humbert says “had I come before myself, I would have given Humbert at least thirty five years for rape and dismissed the rest of the charges.” (352). “His willingness to use the term rape for the first time shows how far from the rationalizations about being bewitched by a nymphet he has travelled” (236). However, his dismissal of the murder charge, for which he is actually on trial, creates the impression that he is judging himself by a highly subjective behavioural code, rather than that of his society, and therefore is still “an unreliable evaluator of his own actions.” (Phelan:236). This ambiguity, this about-turn after years of self-justification actually means that although self-condemnation ought to bring him closer to a reader who condemns paedophilia, it actually creates distance because he becomes even more ambiguous and difficult to trust.
To conclude, both The Outsider and Lolita feature narrators who challenge society’s behavioural code. So why was The Outsider awarded a Nobel prize when Lolita was censored? Having examined the narrators from various angles we have demonstrated that Meursault and Humbert are in many ways polar opposites of each other. Humbert hides behind smoke and mirrors for the entire text; it would seem that neither the reader, nor the other characters, nor even Humbert himself ever truly see him clearly. In contrast, Meursault is unwaveringly sincere throughout the text and, seemingly unconscious of the reader, reflects the reader’s own scrutiny back onto themselves. In Lolita Nabokov challenges us with the thoughts and emotions of Humbert, In The Outsider Camus challenges us with our own.