He is grotesque and horrible and unbearably funny, and he knows it. He will settle for anything, and does. The anything involves marrying Lolita s widowed mother, Charlotte, with all the lies and swallowing of distaste that this implies. Charlotte promptly arranges to send the child away so that the two lovers can be alone together, and Humbert begins to consider the distasteful lies necessitated by murder. Fate, however, intervenes.
Charlotte is killed in an accident.
It turns into a nightmare. Through two years and two lengthy circuits of the American scene, Humbert spirals down the levels of his inferno. Possessed, insatiable, he can never stop wanting Lolita because he never really has her, he has only her body. In the end, his punishment matches his crime. She is now an entirely different person, a triumph for the vital force that has managed to make a life out of the rubble that Humbert s passion created, and the monster s mindless activity merely confirmed.