Clare Quilty Character Analysis

A children’s playwright, child pornographer, and the novel’s villain. Quilty is Humbert Humbert’s double and spiritual twin: a fellow pedophile, writer, and brilliant student of literature. Quilty is not revealed as a major character until the end of the novel, but clues to his identity are strewn throughout the book. Lolita falls in love with Quilty, who helps her to escape from Humbert. But she then abandons Quilty when he asks her to perform in his pornographic films. Quilty himself, it turns out, is impotent. At the end of the novel, Humbert Humbert murders Quilty in his decadent manor house.