Humbert Humbert
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Humbert Humbert is the main character and unreliable narrator of the 1955 novel Lolita, by Russian-born American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. Humbert is a divorced scholar of French poetry who comes to America and falls in love with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, whom he nicknames "Lolita." </p>
Humbert has been enamored with "nymphets," or attractive pubescent girls, ever since his first love, Annabel, died when they were both in their early teens. In Lolita, he sees his dead love come back to life, and will do anything to possess her. He marries Lolita's mother just to be close to her, and after the mother dies in a car accident, he essentially kidnaps the girl, moving her around the country and initiating a sexual relationship with her. When Lolita runs off with playwright Clare Quilty, also a pedophile, Humbert becomes even more obsessed, determined to hunt her down and kill his rival. When he does find her again years later, however, she is no longer the nymphet of his dreams but a pregnant housewife. Realizing he still loves her and finally feeling guilty for corrupting her, Humbert finds and kills Quilty and goes to prison, where he dies after dictating his life story to his lawyer.
As a narrator, Humbert Humbert is remarkable for his sardonic, satiric wit. Nabokov once said of the name: "The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It is a hateful name for a hateful person." The name evokes the Spanish hombre, "man," and the French ombre, "shadow"--much as the name of John Shade, central character in Nabokov's later novel Pale Fire. It also evokes the English word humbug. Furthermore, the double name hints at the novel's doppelgänger motif.
Humbert Humbert has been portrayed on film by James Mason in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 movie adaptation of the novel, and by Jeremy Irons in Adrian Lyne's 1998 remake. Book magazine ranked Humbert Humbert third on its list of the 100 Best Characters in Fiction since 1900.