I can definitely understand your confusion about this book; it's very easy to get caught up in Humbert Humbert's mind as the window we have into the world of Lolita is all through him. We weren't in that situation, so all we have is Humbert Humbert to tell us what happened and if he sees it as Lolita coming on to him, that's what we see too. All of us are guilty of sympathizing too much with Humbert Humbert, judging from the blog posts about whether or not we should be sympathetic to him. Under normal circumstances, no one would feel sorry for a child rapist but because Humbert wants us to feel sympathy for him, we do in some way.
This is Nabokov's trap for bad readers and making a character that would ordinarily be so despicable is a reality check for us. If you're feeling sorry for a child rapist, there's something going very wrong, i.e. that you're identifying with the characters, something Nabokov vehemently speaks out against. In a way, this book is about how much power the narrator has and how easy (and bad) it is to fall into the trap of poor reading skills.
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