In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, the narrator Humbert Humbert exercises the power of memory as he attempts to manipulate time to suit his devices and desires. Realizing that the nymphet stage that occurs in the lives of a select number of girls lasts only between the ages of nine and fourteen, Humbert employs a variety of techniques as he struggles to cope with his unusual lust for these young girls who, he believes , possess a rare grace and charm that sets them apart from their peers. Annabel Lee becomes Humbert's prototypical nymphet as well as his childhood sweetheart when she dies of typhus at the age of twelve. It leaves the child Humbert with a plethora of unfulfilled sexual fantasies that he retains long after he has left his childhood behind. After fulfilling these fantasies twenty-five years later with the twelve-year-old nymphet Dolores Haze, Humbert creates a dilemma for himself as the only way to ensure his prolonged happiness is to freeze time. Thus, Humbert dooms himself from the moment he combines the entity of Annabel Lee with Dolores' flesh and blood vessels, as he unsuccessfully attempts to preserve the fleeting phenomenon that is "Annabel Haze, alias Dolores Lee, alias Loleeta" (Nabokov 167 ). .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIn her essay "Memory, Consciousness, and Time in Nabokov's Lolita," Olga Hasty compares Humbert to Orpheus, whom she calls "a great man of letters." paradigm of mortal resistance to the passage of time” (231). Orpheus is a mythical poet whose love for Eurydice extends endlessly after her death, just like Humbert's love for Annabel Lee. At the beginning of the novel, Humbert describes his failed attempt at a sexual encounter with his childhood sweetheart: “I was on my knees, on the verge of possessing my beloved, when two bearded bathers, the old sailor and his brother, came out from the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later he died of typhus in Corfu” (Nabokov 13). This event has a lasting impact on Humbert, as he states that the shock of her death hindered any further romance in his younger years. Humbert believes that this unrequited longing for Annabel Lee instills in him a lifelong desire for young girls, each of whom possess unique qualities that remind him of his childhood sweetheart. The tragedy of Annabel Lee's untimely death leaves Humbert with only her memories, and these memories prolong his love and desire: “Duration prolongs a particular event, but it also resists closure and new experience, which would interrupt what it prolongs” (Hasty 232). Like Orpheus, Humbert resists the passage of time by focusing on his loss. He prevents himself from moving beyond her death by evoking memories of her and fantasizing about their near-sexual encounter. She will remain in this moment until those fantasies are fulfilled and the essence of Annabel Lee can be instilled in a new girl (Hasty 232). “That little girl, with her marine limbs and fiery tongue, haunted me ever since, until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another” (Nabokov 15). This new girl of course ends up being the young nymphet Dolores Haze. Unlike his prolonged longing for Annabel Lee, Humbert's life with Dolores is characterized by repeated gratification. If Humbert's love for Annabel Lee is like Orpheus's for Eurydice, Humbert is more like Don Juan during his time with Dolores: “Because the moment of satisfaction is fleeting, Don Juan is driven to a love affair after the other with women whose individuality is absorbedon the only list that gives him celebrity” (Hasty 232). Humbert doesn't care about Dolores' unique traits; he only has a physical interest in the girl; as Winston notes, “in fact, he carefully avoided any recognition of her personality that might interfere with the satisfaction of his own physical and psychological needs” (425). Humbert's inability to see Dolores as an individual ultimately drives her to leave him for another, more caring man. The satisfaction Don Juan gets from each sexual encounter diminishes over time; since the moment of satisfaction is increasingly fleeting, he must satisfy his desires more and more frequently. The same pattern occurs with Humbert, as each sexual encounter with Dolores eventually becomes a temporary sustenance that simply keeps him going until he can get gratification again. Humbert desperately tries to space out time by traveling all over the United States while exploiting his young nymphet. The passage of time is only evident in the changes that occur in Dolores' body as she matures (Hasty 235). Humbert recognizes these changes as he also recognizes that he loves Lolita the nymphet, rather than Dolores Haze as an individual: “I knew I had been in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew that she would not be Lolita forever” (Nabokov 65). Humbert considers ways to preserve his Lolita; he regrets the fact that he never filmed her and, even more shocking, he thinks of having a child with her: "With patience and luck I could make her eventually produce a nymphet with my blood in her delicious veins, a Lolita Second, who it will be eight or nine around 1960” (Nabokov 174). He then continues to ponder this potential bloodline as he states that he will “practice on Lolita the Third the art of being a grandfather” (Nabokov 174) By having a daughter who will later have a daughter of her own, Humbert can make the passage of time irrelevant as he will create a lineage of nymphets for himself, each of whom he can exploit as he did with the original Lolita. After Dolores leaves Humbert comes to recognize how precious the unfolding of time has been. He comes to see time not as a loss but rather “as an increase both in the interval of time along which the remembering individual can range, and in possibility. which may arise from that interval” (Hasty 235). He ultimately recognizes that it was unrealistic to imagine that his time with Lolita would last forever, and so the fact that several years have passed while he was with her becomes a blessing. However, memories are not enough for Humbert. He still tries to find someone who can gratify his desires. This time he finds Rita, a very small girl in her mid-twenties. Although he says his senses are only "mildly stimulated", he adopts her as his constant companion and bedfellow for the next two years. Although he does not specifically say what qualities besides her friendliness attract him, his physical descriptions of her make it clear that he likes her childlike qualities: mischief” (Nabokov 259). At one point, Humbert takes Rita to one of the hotels where he and Lolita stayed during their travels, in an attempt to relive the moment spent with the nymphet. However, as Lolita tells him later, "the past is the past" and his relationship with Rita hopelessly fails to satisfy his desire for the young girl (272). He discovers that his memories of Lolita are now almost as unsatisfying as his memories of Annabel Lee were years before, and that the only way he will ever be truly happy is with Lolita, his one true living love. Two years after her escape from him, Dolores writes Humbert a letter informing him that she has married and is expecting a child. With this, the obsession of. 421-427