To Amanda

In response to Amanda's question regarding why Nabokov wrote a novel about a pedophile, I have this to say:

There are a number of reasons he could have decided to write about a pedophile, and we will probably never know for sure why he made his choice. However, one possibility could be that he did it because it is an authors responsibility to represent reality. Unfortunately, pedophilia is a real thing, and there are men like Humbert out there. Another reason could be to toy with the reader's emotions. Nabokov loves to make his readers reflect deeply on his writings. What's a better way to do that than to portray a man who we should be immediately repulsed by, but then add in factors that make the reader feel sympathy for him. It really causes one to question morality by blurring a line that seems like it would be well defined.

It is very possible that neither of these are the real answer to her question. Nabokov, and Nabokov alone, knows the answer...or maybe even he doesn't. People often don't know he real reason behind things that they do.