DID YOU FALL FOR IT? : Sympathy and Empathy in Nabokov's Lolita and The Enchanter.

Abstract: The goal of this study was to examine if, how, and why sympathy and empathy was created in Nabokov’s two narratives dealing with pedophilia; Lolita and The Enchanter. A large amount of research did exist on this subject regarding Lolita, but not on The Enchanter. Since Nabokov has referred to The Enchanter as a kind of pre-Lolita in the “Authors Note One” in The Enchanter, I thought it would be interesting to see what similar techniques he used to generate sympathy and empathy from the reader in the two books, and to examine if they had any differences regarding the subject. After a close reading of the books, some defining features could be found to be connected to sympathy and empathy. These features had to do with the narration, the form, and the language. The protagonists used these different feature to create a bond with the reader, a bond that is then used to make the reader feel for or/and with the protagonists. Lolita is a longer, more developed, and more comprehensive story than The Enchanter which gives Humbert more time to create and use this bond with the reader. Therefore, Lolita is more likely to generate empathy and sympathy from the reader. If a reader experiences those emotions though, depends on the individual reader. All I have presented in this essay is related to how Nabokov invite empathy and sympathy from the reader when reading Lolita and The Enchanter. That does not mean all readers experience these emotions since it is an individual process that depends on how each reader interprets the narrative.