Humbert Humbert is the pseudonymous narrator of the novel. All aspects of the story, including his own descriptions of himself and others, are framed through his eyes. According to himself, he is smart, well-read, charming, good-looking, and good at remembering things. Humbert is suspicious of psychiatry as a field. He believes it is reductive and that psychiatrists are easily manipulated; as such, he enjoys toying with them.

Humbert’s unconsummated love affair with Annabel Leigh as a boy leads to his current and lifelong obsession with nymphets, or young girls who are irresistibly sexually attractive to men. The narcissistic aspects of his personality give him a heightened belief in his own abilities to charm others around him, and he regularly brags about how well he can convince others of his lies.

Humbert enjoys wordplay, and he litters the text with puns, allusions, and humorous asides as well as criticisms of American life. Humbert routinely tries to justify his behavior with his erudition; he makes impassioned defenses of pedophilia by citing classical literature, history, and art.

Humbert is especially cruel toward women. Every woman in his life dies, and he dismisses almost all of their deaths in blunt, impersonal terms. His mother dies in a storm and Annabel Leigh, his first nymphet, of typhus.