Themes

I saw that there were two main themes I am going to talk about in the book as a whole. First would be love and second would be this sense of innocence. This book I really enjoyed and like I talked about in my last post I feel like this could go along with the AP curriculum because of some of these themes and the delivery of them.

First off, the idea of "love". This happens to be a theme in just about all the books we read this year. In the Song of Solomon and The Handmaids tale,  love is a huge theme which overarches everything. All these characters have something in common, as they will do anything to fill this void. As we have learned before in this class, love can make you do just about anything because of how important it is to us as humans by nature. In Lolita, this is a huge theme because it makes Humbert do what he does. He needs to fill this void and the only way he can do so is through loving nymphets, specifically Lolita. We see again that love can make someone do anything and this is a huge theme throughout a lot of novels that continued through this one.

Next I thought the idea of innocence was a huge one. Through Humberts acts and through descriptions we see this. We see that Humbert plays as though he is doing nothing wrong. He will always brush it off as if he's doing nothing. This is part of why it is so interesting to read but also allows us to see a theme. He plays as though he is innocent and has done nothing wrong. He claims these are just acts of love and nothing more. He paints this picture as everything is fine when it really isn't. The way Lolita is portrayed is also as if she has no idea what is going on half the time. There is this whole motif of theme of innocence which is a huge premise to why this book is so creepy.

Overall I took these two themes as some of the main ones. This idea of innocence and then the overarching need for love that we have seen before. Overall I really enjoyed reading this book and blogging my experiences and thoughts. Thank you guys all for reading and I defiantly recommend everyone to read Lolita.

AP Worthy?

Would I consider this book of an AP level? My initial reaction is to say of course, but it is a little more difficult than that. I think like some of the other books we have read in class this year it has some of the same themes including relationships, love, and connections but at the same time part of me says that this book would not be good for a class. I think that the book is definitely up to AP level but may not be able to be taught in a class. Now this book was very memorable but part of me thinks thats why it shouldn't be taught in a classroom setting.

I am very torn. I believe that because of how intricate the meaning and the style of the novel was it should automatically by of this level and I think that is true. BUT I do not believe this should be taught because of how memorable it is, (or should it because kids don't live under rocks and they have heard of things of this nature). Overall I am conflicted.

I believe that the book has the style and formatting to be a great AP level novel which I throughly enjoyed because it was very different than some of the books we have read this year. At the same time though I believe that it was a good book for a free choice because it allowed us to pick what we read and how we wanted to respond. This allowed me to put myself into this position to read the book rather than being forced to read it. Lolita was definitely an amazing memorable book which was up to the AP standard in my opinion, my only concern would be the delivery.