Which character in Lolita influences Humbert's development, and how does this affect the overall meaning of the novel?

Humbert Humbert is such an unreliable narrator that the reader cannot trust any of the claims he makes. However, if there is one character in Lolita who does appear to have influenced his perspectives, development, choices, and motives, it is Annabel Leigh. Humbert first refers to Annabel in the third paragraph of the novel, calling her Lolita's precursor and saying that "there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child."

Annabel was only a few months younger than Humbert. He remarks that she was not a "nymphet" in his eyes, since they were both children. If she had not died suddenly, leaving him with an image of immature perfection and a frustrated love that could never develop or be consummated, Humbert might have grown up and become attracted to women of approximately his own age.

Therefore, if the reader takes Humbert at his word, it appears that the tragedy of Annabel's early death was also a tragedy for him and ultimately for Lolita. The novel shows the way in which personality and desires are shaped by childhood trauma. However, it is also clear that it was not any specific aspect of Annabel's personality that influenced Humbert so profoundly, but the feelings he projected onto her and the shock caused by her premature death.

How does Lolita influence Humbert's perspective, development, and choices?

In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, it is arguable that Lolita herself does not influence Humbert's perspective, development, choices, or motives in any way at all and that her influence therefore contributes nothing to the meaning of the work that bears her name. The reader cannot be sure about this, since the voice that dominates the work is that of Humbert himself, one of the least reliable narrators in American fiction.

When Humbert meets Lolita, he is an adult and she is a child. His sexual preferences are fully formed—in particular, his obsession with the young girls to whom he refers as "nymphets." He sees in Lolita the ideal of the type of girl he has spent his life pursuing since his infatuation with Annabel Leigh (who takes her name from another infant idealization, Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee). The reader never learns any reliable information about Lolita herself, what she wants and what she is like, since Humbert continually projects his own desires and neuroses onto her.

That said, one could also argue that Lolita influences Humbert by acting as a catalyst that draws out Humbert's latent tendencies and desires and leads him to act upon them. Due to Lolita's presence, Humbert assumes considerable risk in pursuing his fantasies and desires, ultimately altering the course of his life. As mentioned before, whether these developments constitute a fundamental shift in Humbert's character is doubtful, but they do represent an outward change.

What event in Lolita contributes to developing Humbert's character and the work's meaning?

The events in Lolita that contribute to the development of Humbert's character and the meaning of the work relate to his childhood relationship with Annabel Leigh. It was this relationship, concluding tragically with Annabel's death, that, according to Humbert, first caused him to fixate on young girls as the objects of his emotional and sexual desire.

Humbert was not present at Annabel's death, so perhaps the most significant single event that shapes his character is their interrupted tryst which Humbert describes as their "final attempt to thwart fate." At the end of chapter 3, Humbert and Annabel go to the beach and find a shallow cave. They are caressing each other passionately, and Humbert is "on the point of possessing" Annabel, when two old men come out of the sea where they have been bathing and shout "ribald encouragement" at the young couple.

This abrupt and humiliating end to Humbert's final attempt to make love to Annabel seems to have contributed to his arrested development, suddenly truncating the most important relationship of his young life. Since he never saw Annabel again, she remained forever a child in his eyes, with the ugliness of the adult world represented by the sordid comments of the old men.