A Postmodern Cultural Perspective in Lolita and A...

A Postmodern Cultural Perspective in Lolita and A Streetcar Named Desire Postmodernism has emerged as a reaction to modernism thoughts and well-established modernist systems. (Wikipedia, 2005) Specific to Nabokovs Lolita and Williams Streetcar Named Desire is the idea that both of the novels are written under the view of postmodernism as a cultural movement and that they are broadly defined as the condition of Western society especially after World War II (period in which the novel were written; 1947 for Streetcar and 1955 for Lolita).†¦show more content†¦Blanche Dubois embodies Old Southern America values, defined by the Old South culture. The term originally came into use after the American Civil War. (Wikipedia, 2005) Many southern whites used it with nostalgia to represent the memories of a time of prosperity, social order, gracious living and of white supremacy It is also a reference to the past times of slavery and the plantation economy. Stanley Kowalski, embodies a rising member of the industrial immigrant class but also the devil of the cold war period which opposed Western and Eastern countries located on the other side of the Iron Curtain, such as Poland (which is Stanleys native land). Hes the personification of modern practicality, crudeness and brutality. In Lolita, Humbert symbolizes the Old and erudite Europe, the bespectated , round-backed Herr Humbert coming with his Central-European trunks to gather dust in his corner behind a heap of old books. (Lolita, p56) He is born in Paris with a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins (Lolita, p.9), who immigrates in New York (as a reference to the American dream). His arrival