In the mind's eye, Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita lives in a world of eternal nymphets and immutable time, of frozen crystals and glass. But reality is mobile and not frozen, and no matter how much he tries to reject it, HH is forced to recognize the impermanence of the external world through its mirror projection in his mind. Thus, HH strives to freeze time behind glass surfaces only to be foiled by the harsh mirror reflection of transitory reality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Humbert Humbert's misunderstanding of "Our Glass Lake", actually "Hourglass Lake", reveals his desire to stop the flow of time and the obstruction of this dream by the harsh memory of reality reflected in surfaces at mirror. HH dreams of an “enchanted island” of “entranced time” where all the nymphets reside, eternally unaffected by age (Nabokov 16-17). This desire to freeze time is emphasized by HH's visions of frozen water. If rushing, rushing water suggests the ceaseless movement of time, then ice and crystallization evoke its cessation. In fact, before visiting the Lake, HH imagines it “covered by a sheet of emerald ice” (54). At this glacial lake, HH dreamed of having a “quiet little orgy” with Lolita after pretending to have lost his “wristwatch” to escape from Charlotte (54). The loss of his watch further highlights His Holiness' desire for the disappearance of time. Later, when he gets glasses for whiskey and soda, he thinks of the ice cubes as "little pillow-shaped blocks... pillows for the polar teddy bear, Lo" (97); he wants a frozen Lo, an eternal Lo nymphet untouched by temporality, "imprisoned in...crystalline sleep" (123). Adding liquid to the glass produced “squealing, tortured sounds as the hot water melted [the ice cubes] in their cells” (97). Thus, HH's predilection for crystallized, glassy surfaces and his aversion to running water describe his desire to stem the tide of time. However, his fantasies of immobilized time are shattered by mirrors, which constantly remind him of the temporality of reality. Hourglass Lake is a “curious mirage” (56). A mirage itself is "an optical effect sometimes seen at sea... which may have the appearance of... a mirror in which distant objects are seen inverted."[1] Thus Hourglass Lake emerges as a mirror and, far from being frozen, actually resides in the “great heat” (81). The liquidity, warmth and inverted mirror quality of Hourglass Lake reveal it to be the exact opposite of the crystallized Our Glass Lake that HH had imagined in his mind. Its truly evocative name further accentuates the temporality of reality that opposes HH's internal fantasies of frozen glass. Furthermore, while in his dreams he loses his wristwatch to hit on Lolita, in reality his wristwatch remains worn and perfectly intact, not damaged by rough waters because it is "waterproof"; within the mirror lake, HH cannot physically destroy or escape time (89). Thus the mirrors in reality diametrically oppose HH's internal fantasies and reveal to him the impossibility of his dreams of frozen time. HH's memories of Lolita in cinematic terms further reveal her desire to stop time. Films are formed by projecting light through a glass lens onto a film reel onto a screen. The reproduction of the film suggests a break in time, a reliving of images from the past that intrude on the present. The images of glass recur.