Murder of Quilty

The murdering of Quilty is an interesting scene in the novel Lolita. When Humbet is killing Quilty, Nabokov creates a scenario that the reader would not necessarily expect. Humbert states, "I fired three or four times in quick succession, wounding him at every blaze…his face would twitch in an absurd clownish manner, as if he were exaggerating the pain; and he shivered every time a bullet hit him as if I were tickling him, and every time I got him with those slow, clumsy, blind bullets of mine, he would say under his breath, with a phony British accent – all the while dreadfully twitching, shivering, smirking…ah, that hurts, sir, enough!" (Nabokov 303). Nabokov creates a long, drawn out murder scene where Quilty has been shot multiple times and continues to cry out in pain. I found the murder of Quilty to be an unexpected end to the novel.

I think the reason that Nabokov makes the death of Quilty unexpected is because the whole idea behind story is unexpected. We would never expect Humbert and Lolita to be in a relationship or to be in love because of their age gap. I think the unexpectedness of the murder of Quilty relates to the unexpectedness of the novel in general.