8 Important Lessons From The Classic Novel Lolita

It’s easier to find advice for what not to do than what to do. This is true in general, but is overwhelmingly true of one of the greatest cautionary tales on why not to be a beta male that literature or the screen has seen: Nabokov’s novel Lolita, and in particular, Stanley Kubrick’s often forgotten 1962 film adaptation.

Lolita is worth a watch or re-watch; or even better, a read or re-read. We all know the one sentence summary: a grown man falls in love with a barely out of puberty hot girl. But the one sentence boildown loses all of the subtlety of the movie—and it is in the subtlety that the timeless wisdom is found.

But there is one group (a group which your humble writer was a member of; and perhaps still may be) that needs to listen to the wisdom of the movie. A sub-group of the “beta male” category: the “nerdy beta male” or, slightly less euphemistically, the “pseudo-intellectual beta male.” He prides himself on the size of his bookshelf, on his knowledge of obscure words, on his superior wit and intelligence as compared to those around him. The protagonist of Lolita, the doubly-named Humbert Humbert, is the consummate pseudo-intellectual beta. He is a disaster, whose life falls into greater and greater disaster as the narrative goes on, and the cautionary tale is clear: don’t be Humbert Humbert.

This general lesson becomes clearest in eight particular ways throughout the movie. Let’s go through them.

1. Supplicating yourself to a girl will make both the girl miserable, and you miserable. When Lolita complains to Humbert Humbert that she’s not happy, he gives a cringe-inducing speech about how he does everything for her and cleans up after her while painting her toe-nails. Even without words, the toe-nail painting scene would have made the same point. The result of the supplication? She’s even unhappier—and so is he.

2. Beta males never learn. Humbert Humbert keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over again. This point becomes unequivocally clear in the last scene of the movie. Lolita had run away years earlier and they had not seen each other for years, she is now married and pregnant, and yet, again, he makes one last attempt to convince her to run away from her husband and elope with him. Of course, she rejects him.

3. Oneitis is fatal, literally. Our sad professor Humbert falls in love with the little girl and can’t get over her. He ends up killing the alpha male, going to jail, and dying in jail, as the final credits tell us.

4. Once a girl has dated an Alpha, she’ll always be an Alpha Widow. Lolita confesses, at the end of the movie, a key detail that ties the whole plot together: that she had been in-love with her mom’s old boyfriend, who had been the person following them around. He was the alpha male that she couldn’t get over. What did he do right? He was the opposite of Humbert. He had the balls to do risky and fun things—like pretend to be a German school psychologist to trick Humbert. Plus he hung out with artists and other cool kids.

5. Once an Alpha Widow, the girl will marry the supportive, nice guy beta loser. This is precisely what Lolita does, and the final part of the movie goes to pains to show what a loser he is. He can’t even open his beer can properly. It’s important to note that the husband isn’t the intellectual beta, but the manly beta. He works with his hands, and comes off as a classic lower middle class type guy—that type of guy beats the intellectual beta for the alpha widow, any day.

6. Some girls are just slutty. Both Lolita and her mom have the “Thousand Cock Stare.” In the movie, neither the mother’s nor the daughter’s sluttiness can be tamed. The mother even gives a speech to her husband’s dead ashes, promising that next time she’ll find a better guy—a speech reminiscent of many conversations girls have had with me and other female friends, promising to find a better guy next time. They never do.

7. Like mother, like daughter. There is truth to the ancient cliche: you want to know what a girl will be like in a few decades? Look at her mom. And what will your daughter be like? Probably a lot like her mom. This is an under-rated risk of slutmating.

Humbert Humbert submissively painting Lolita’s toenails.

8. Admit to yourself who you are. One of the Humbert’s core problems was that he never seized his strengths to make himself attractive and find his own path. Instead, he let his own Achilles’ Heels seize control of his destiny. He married Lolita’s mom, even though he was never interested in her, just to get to her daughter. He never searched for someone with whom he could have an adult relationship, instead using his position of power over Lolita to pressure her into a relationship with him. He tried to control Lolita by not allowing her to do anything, rather than trying to charm her so she would want to be with him. He shacked up with her in an illegal manner (she was his underage step-daughter, after all), so he could always be intimidated by the police, and scared they were after him even when they weren’t—leading to a timid life of fear.

Looking back at it from today, there’s a meta-lesson in Kubrick’s movie, and the original book, beyond the obvious of not Humbertizing yourself. It’s that human nature doesn’t change, across time or space. The movie was released 55 years ago; the book published over 60 years ago. With some updated language and details, the same lessons are just as true today as they were then, but it is even more important that the lessons are spread and listened to today, since there are far fewer good role models for men to follow today, than there were in 1962.

Much more about conspiracy theories and protecting your privacy.

Read More: 4 Reasons Why Beta Males Persist In Human Populations

68 thoughts on “8 Important Lessons From The Classic Novel Lolita”

  1. Even if implies banging young girls that are possibly underage, the lesson here is, pump and dump these girls. Period.

    1. Hi Rocko you’re either dumb or extremely stupid, I’m not sure quite yet. Either way, I’m sure some overzealous sjw can get you in a ton of trouble for what you wrote. Welcome to a government list!

      1. Yes, the 1997 version starring Jeremy Irons is much better. It follows the book closely. The 1962 only loosely follows the book and leaves much of the story out.

      2. Nekkid scenes filmed in France cuz frogs love naked kids.
        It was a good movie despite the obvious immorality.

  2. Most important lesson to be learned? Ask to see her drivers permit before jumping in the sack!

  3. I remember a deranged leftist woman telling me that Nabakov was her favorite writer. Instantly, I knew that something was amiss. But it’s simple really…
    Anything that praises the dysfunctional is a darling of the left.

  4. Advice From a Young Man Who Had Sex With Middle-Aged Women
    I once met a middle aged woman 20 years older than I was (Filipino Spanish) who was drunk and dragged me back to her house and blew me (deep throat) and I screwed her.
    She was 50 and her son was about 25 or so and he shot me some dirty looks the next day in his car. But I was not the first.
    Most Lolitas will be sluts their entire life. No amount of caring, time or money investment will change their essential character which is lousy and stupid.
    The reality is the slutty young Lolitas will never possess the qualities that Betas read into their looks.
    Few accumulate much wisdom.
    Betas waste time reading romantic meaning into callow young Lolitas. There is none there.

      1. Banging 16 year old is Beta for that 20 year old loser who is still hanging around high school kids when his own age group have moved on to college or jobs.
        Men who screw barely legal teenagers are Beta who lack the funds or prospects or looks to impress a grown woman their own age most of who will tell them to piss off.
        We all knew that loser who hung around our neighborhood after we joined the army or went to university who was still hanging around high school kids and living at home at 21.

        1. What a load of cack.
          The younger a girl, the higher her SMV. A “loser” can’t bang a 16 year old girl more easily than a 30 year old. That doesn’t compute. Only a feminist uses the can’t get a woman his age drivel.
          Most teen girls only prefer “cute” boys or the football captain of her high school. If a 40 year old man manages to legally bang a 16 years old girl then hats off to him.

        2. well, as a successful man who has impressed many a woman ‘my own age’, the prospect of banging 16-18 year olds does sound appealing. I had an 18 year old friend with benefits when I was 35, and it was rejuvenating. I can seek intellectual companionship with older women, but for plain old lust the young ones have it.

        3. No such thing as barely legal, they either are and you can bang them, or they aren’t and you leave them for later.

    1. you knowingly slept with a year old braod at 20? Gawd Dayam man! how thirsty were you!
      Seriously. we men need to get our shit together. Behavior like you just out lined is the oly reason why these women -young or old – get away with this culturally, and family destrotying bull shit.
      I have two sons, niether past 13 and both are already being well versed in the destructive ways and tendacoies of females and how to avoid, counteract, or eradictae them. The insane are running the asylum. And the Doctors and orderlies are at their beck and call!

  5. Reading this article it should be for anyone calling himself an Alpha, to take the points raised and apply some self reflection to see if any of those points apply to you. If they do, change how you live, but at least be aware of your simping/beta moves. Aside from the whole premise of the book and movie, well don’t get yourself infected with oneitis on quasi legal sluts or sluts in general. The preoccupation of her being questionably legal aged (for the era the movie and book was made she likely was), well, is a red herring argument by commenters who cant see past it. I would think smart guys would not engage in statutory stupidity and put their own freedom on the line. Just saying. Don’t support the trolls that delegitimize ROK because they poison the well by focusing on OUT OF CONTEXT heinous aspects of articles. We already know that the SJW scum have made it their purpose to completely smear ROK to kill off any opposition discussion at all concerning SJW pet topics especially FEMINISM (the biggest most dangerous Cancer of society and this age).

  6. On those pictures that girl doesn’t really look like a little girl to me. At worst a teen (even that is questionable) and that is legal in many countries.

    1. She was 16 in the film. Years later when the guy returned she was 20 and deep into a dysfunctional life.
      She barely remembered him.

    2. The movie is supposed to be 3edgy5me but the chick is like, 19. Its cowardly bc obvs they can’t get a literal 13 yr old, but they dont even make her look and act 13 and it loses half the power of tbe book.

  7. I forgot Kubrick directed Lolita. I have most of his movies on DVD. I’ll have to watch this one and file it in the “how not to act around women”.

    1. “How not act”
      Knew a great deal of white trash growing up in Detroit and this is how “they act”:
      The 16 year old slut always looks 35 ten years later when she is a single mother on Food Stamps or Assistance to Dependent Children or whatever. Usually she is about 19 or 20 when some Chad finally hits her up on the wrong night.
      She will never want a Beta male provider.
      Some of these chicks get into stripping and every stripper you ever meet will be an aging Lolita in her early twenties to thirties.
      Even when these Lolitas are 50 they attracted to the 25 year old Chad. At that age the young Chads will simply allow them to suck him off. A Lolita is basically the same all her life.
      Lolitas are usually not bright at all.

      1. “”Some of these chicks get into stripping and every stripper you ever meet will be an aging Lolita in her early twenties to thirties.””
        And you know this how? I am not white knighting, nor do I doubt you. But I am mildly curious as to why you think this….

    2. Kubrick’s teen villains.
      Alex of Clockwork Orange was a male Lolita. He got older in the film and went to prison and all the rest but nothing could change him. When we finally leave him he is about 19 or 20. Nothing will change about him.
      Kubrick films are all about futility.

        1. Falcon
          We knew Alex would commit another random vicious crime the second he got out of the hospital at the end. Kubrick makes a point that is true of male thugs which is that they cannot learn and are incredibly thick-skinned from their own suffering: Alex’s “droogs” became cops or got jobs but Alex himself will remain on the street getting locked up for the rest of his life until he goes into an early grave.
          Lolitas are the same. Sluts get older and suffer the consequences that come along with beastly men like pregnancy and domestic violence and rape but they will gain no insight whatsoever into their behavior. As I stated of the 50 year old slut the only instinct they have is too suck the cocks of indifferent men.

      1. Because you did not read the book, he change in the book, age change him, he got bored of the ultra violence and was considering to have a family.

        1. BOOK VS FILM DIFFERENCES
          Alex is mentioned as being 18 in the film (By his truant officer warning he is old enough to go to an adult prison) vs being 15 in the book and 18 years old in Burgess’s final chapter.
          Burgess wrote Alex as a pig-ignorant kid a bit naive whereas McDowell portrays a street-smart and more mature young man (Albeit still precocious for his late teens).
          The girls he screws are also older, in their late teens like him and not 10 years old like the book.
          Kubrick makes it clear at the end of the film that his life of random vicious petty crime is going to continue.
          What Burgess was trying to point out and what Kubrick was is radically different.

        2. DUNCAN Interesting Point Age Difference
          Kubrick said he wanted to “lessen the controversy” by making Alex and his gang “all 17 or 18 years old” (Direct quote) and “reduce sympathy for their age”.
          He succeeds in this because McDowell and the others do not look like kids but like young adult criminals past adolescence.
          By making Alex older and more mature in the film (He is smarter too) there is no indication that he has any capacity to change with age like Burgess hinted. He is 20 years old when the film concludes in the hospital.

    1. KUBRICK’S MOLESTERS
      Jack Nicholson is hinted to have molested his son in the Shining. He reads a nude male magazine “Playgirl” in a hotel lobby lying around with great interest. He shows no sexual interest in his wife (Neither would I) who seems like a beard of sorts. He is repulsed by the nude ghost in the bathtub.
      Alexander Delarge flirts with his Truant Officer who gropes his crotch and then flirts with the obviously gay Prison Chaplain to get special privileges and is sexually harassed by older inmates in the prison.
      Lolita is a female child molested by the hero.
      Eyes Wide Shut’s Russian father tries to pimp his daughter to Tom Cruise.

      1. Your analysis of the Shining is off; no disrespect intended.
        There’s no evidence of molestation; what’s implied is that he accidentally injured his son’s arm in an angry fit and it has apparently caused his wife to establish distance as well. In another scene the wife suspects that Jack may have done something mean to the boy as she cannot come up with a natural explanation for their son’s state of terror. This is understandable, as invoking the supernatural would seem both insane as well as too intimidating a thought to be entertained while they are stuck in a solitary mansion in mid-winter.
        When Jack comes across the young nude ghost, he’s obviously intrigued and starts making out with her (BTW the woman posed for Playboy or had a related stint back in those days) until she turns into the ghastly old zombie woman, which naturally terrifies him.

      2. Your assessment leaves out too many other moments in Kubrick to mention which null and void your theme. Start all over again if you’re serious.

  8. I always had a fascination with Lolita. Not the novel, but the concept of a Lolita and the style. I guess it’s because I always looked younger than I am and always had a dolly-like aesthetic, so that sort of beauty always made me feel uniquely desirable. I still buy Lolita inspired dresses to this day because I am always soft on that sort of look even when I convince myself to not be.

    1. Your assessment leaves out too many other moments in Kubrick to mention which null and void your theme. Start all over again if you’re serious.

  9. Completely agreed, especially with No. 3. I almost fell for that one a few years back with a girl. Thank god I wised up.

  10. Humbert Humbert in “Lolita” was James Mason’s 2nd greatest role.
    Here was his first:

    1. My money is on Mason in the other King adaptation “Salem’s Lot”. David Soul was his his usual spaced-out Swedish-hippie looking self miscast as the writer and the vampire kind of ridiculous but Straker managed to hold that movie together.

  11. i openly admit it would be nigh impossible
    not to develop one-itis for Sue Lyon in 1962
    even though we know Lolita will grow up to
    be just like the mother (Shelley Winters)
    *You don’t want to see her today;
    she’s the same age as Dubya
    and she’s a smoker.
    **FYI she was 16 in the movie
    portraying a 14 year old
    while the book says
    she is only 12.

    1. J WRIGHT ?
      Kubrick would say in interviews that to “reduce controversy (he) raised Alex’s age to 18 (from 15)” in Clockwork Orange (I could not even buy McDowell as a high school senior to be honest as he was obviously in his mid-20’s).
      The entire impact of Alex’s very young age is gone from the film version because McDowell and his gang look like the young adults they were.
      Yet the opposite was true of Lolita and he cast a much younger girl.

  12. Salem’s Lot’s “Straker” might be his best casting coup with Hutch. He was pretty good in that film.

  13. There’s nothing wrong with being alpha…if women are more attracted this type, then it a means there’s something about it…same as there is about hot young women versus empowered sluts with tattoos and mangled vaginas.
    As for little or big sluts, just don’t date them, don’t spend time with them,don’t do anything that would create a context for you to catch feelings. Just fuck and chuck,man.

  14. Maybe I am misremembering the book, but I thought it was about a straight up pedo, not someone chasing a sexually developed teenager. I recall sickening descriptions of Lolita’s narrow hips and otherwise undeveloped body.

    1. KUBRICK made Lolita 14 instead of 12 for the same reason he made Alex in Clockwork Orange 18 instead of 15 saying it was “less shocking”.
      The hero of the film WAS a straight-up Pedo who could even have sex with a grown woman (he was divorced) and had been to many child prostitutes prior to Lolita.

    2. Wrong in the sense, Nabo’s Loli is undergoing puberty and so, sexually viable (grass on the field).

  15. So apparently, this web site thinks that a child pornographer is an “alpha male.”
    I don’t care what the Kubrick films says (it’s been a decade since I saw it), but in the original novel, the “alpha male” Lolita leaves Humbert for is a child pornographer! That’s why she leaves him too!

  16. ROX
    Sluts and career criminals mature early and are incapable of growth or learning was Kubrick’s point.
    Kubrick’s Alex is never going to learn and be in and out of prison for random vicious crime.
    Lolita is going to bounce around with cads and Chads getting used badly.

  17. This is the most perceptive analysis of Lolita I’ve ever seen. It ought to be taught in college lit courses.
    It’s also full of good advice for — I started to say men –boys.

  18. KUBRICK ADAPTATIONS
    Lolita and Clockwork Orange the novel both indicated the characters would change and some tiny bit of redemption would occur.
    Kubrick’s adaptations were more bleak: Alex is going to leave the hospital and commit more random vicious crimes until he is back in jail for the rest of his life and then an early grave.
    Lolita is simply going to be a rougher slut who works the bars and becomes a borderline alcoholic.

  19. KUBRICK & RACE
    Kubrick could not have foreseen that his films were far more reflective of the ghetto or minority underclass.
    Alex is so white he is almost an albino but his crimes are really characteristic of the hood rat-the home invasions, raping middle-aged helpless women, random street crime.
    Lolita is also a white female her tale is typical of hoodrats-the early promiscuity, aging fast and abandoned by Chad the cad…finally single motherhood long forgotten by the Alpha who left her that way.

  20. Zsa Zsa Gabor comes to mind as a true lifelong ‘Lolita’ personality type. She’s had NINE husbands throughout her life. When she lost her V card she won’t tell. At 15 she was told by her father to get rid of her small dog so she begged the Turkish ambassador to the UK to marry her with the stipulation that her little toy poodle comes with. She was later crowned miss Hungary 1936 and performed for Hitler once.
    http://static.nanopress.it/r/845×0/www.nanopress.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Zsa-Zsa-Gabor.jpg
    Then she got knocked up by hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and gave birth to her only child Francesca Hilton. She was one lifelong pussy powered Lolita story.
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Zsa_Zsa_Gabor_-_Ray_-_1953.jpg

    https://images-production.global.ssl.fastly.net/uploads/posts/image/90176/zsa-zsa-gabor.jpg
    She’s a bit vulgar for a 70 yo but not bad looking at that age. Many females look hideous at 50. She was a walking brothel in the western socialite marriage arena and she played her pussy like a fiddle swooning rich men for 50+ years even after she was post wall. That’s proof that Lolitas live their entire lives running skeet game with their pussies. Remember she bagged ““NINE““ wealthy husbands. I wonder if some tatted nazi couldn’t have just thrown her on the back of his BSA motorcycle when she was a teen and hauled her away and domesticated her properly. But her socially connected father exposed her to rich alphas since she was in diapers. She learned to play rich men from the cradle.

  21. My golden rule is “if you can’t live without something, that thing owns you”.
    Be them material goods or other people, a man must be able to do without.

  22. Always meant to read “Lolita” and see the movie. Then HBO ran the Jeremy Irons version. Which the promo revealed, depicts Lolita as she is in the book; 12 years old, with pigtails, and braces. No thank you. And is why I lost interest in Kubrick’s version, because it’s obviously a cheat, or dishonest. Not to mention, bombastic, pretentious rocker, Nick Cave declaring the book great literature, ended my interest in reading it. Nonetheless, Ted Deveer’s bio strikes me as the best one I’ve seen at ROK.

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