40 pages • 1 hour read
Jaycee DugardA Stolen Life: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-5 Summary
This summary section includes Chapter 1: “The Taking,” Chapter 2: “Stolen,” Chapter 3: “The Secret Backyard,” Chapter 4: “Alone in a Strange Place,” and Chapter 5: “The First Time.”
Jaycee is an eleven-year-old girl who lives in Tahoe, California, with her mother, stepfather, Carl, and her baby stepsister. On June 10, 1991, her day starts out like any normal school day. Her head is filled with thoughts of a summer job on a horse ranch. She is also troubled by the barrage of criticism from her stepfather. The family recently moved from Orange County, but Jaycee feels much safer in Tahoe.
Since nobody is home to drive her to school, she walks down the road to the school bus stop. A car slows, and a man leans out to ask for directions. Without warning, he hits Jaycee with a stun gun and stuffs her into the back seat under a blanket. Panicked, Jaycee thinks, “I don’t understand what’s happening. I want to go home. I want to crawl back into my bed. I want to play with my sister. I want my mommy. I want time to reverse itself and give me a do-over” (19).
Jaycee is bundled into a house with a blanket over her head so she can’t see her surroundings. The man, whose name is Philip, warns her not to try to escape because he will use the stun gun again. He also cautions that he has Doberman attack dogs outside who don’t like strangers. Traumatized, Jaycee does as she’s told.
Philip leads the girl into a bathroom, makes her remove her clothing, and orders her to take a shower with him. He also wants her to touch his genitals. Jaycee has no idea why, but she complies. After the shower, Phillip shaves all the hair off her body and gives her a clean towel to cover herself. All her belongings have been removed.
Next, Philip instructs Jaycee to follow him into the backyard. He puts a blanket over her head and leads her into a shed. Then, he cuffs her hands behind her back because he says that he doesn’t trust her yet. After that, Jaycee is left alone. She tries to sleep but is very uncomfortable with her hands bound.
When Jaycee wakes up, Phillip returns with food. He checks on her once a day and removes the cuffs long enough for her to eat and to use the bucket he brings for her toilet. Frightened and lonely, she comes to depend on these visits: “He used his powers of persuasion to gain my trust. He became my entire world. I depended on him for food, water, my toilet […] I craved human contact so much by then that I actually looked forward to him coming to see me” (29).
About a week after her abduction, Jaycee gets her usual visit from Phillip bearing food, but this time he insists on having sex with her. The experience is frightening and painful: “He lies on top of me. He is so heavy. I can’t stop crying. He said he’d be quick and it would be better if I didn’t struggle because then he wouldn’t have to get aggressive. I don’t understand any of this” (31).
Phillip continues the pattern of raping Jaycee periodically over the next few weeks and months. Strangely enough, she still relies on him for food and companionship. She is even grateful when he installs an air conditioner in the overheated shed.
Chapters 6-9 Summary
This summary section includes Chapter 6: “First Kitty,” Chapter 7: “The First ‘Run,’” Chapter 8: “Nancy,” and Chapter 9: “Easter: Phillip on an Island.”
Over time, Phillip relaxes his guard and agrees to take the cuffs off if Jaycee promises to behave. She explores the shed where she’s kept and finds sound equipment for Phillip’s studio because he plans to have a big musical career someday. Phillip brings Jaycee a television. He also finds her a kitten to keep her company, but he takes it away after a short while since it is soiling the shed. Jaycee is heartbroken, but she’s glad that the cat will have a chance to know freedom again in the outside world.
During this time, Phillip explains that he took Jaycee to help him with his sexual difficulties: “He says I am helping him with his sex problem. He says that instead of him hurting other people with his ‘problem,’ he took me and brought me here so I could help him and he wouldn’t have to hurt anyone else ever again” (37).
As Jaycee’s life falls into a monotonous routine, Phillip involves her in something he calls a “run.” For a run, Phillip takes Jaycee to a different shed on the property that he calls “Next Door.” It contains a room with bars on the windows. Then, he uses methamphetamine to get high. During these drug bouts, he will stay up for days and expect Jaycee to fulfill all his sexual fantasies. Jaycee says, “The ‘runs’ were some of the most horrible moments of my life. I can’t think of a good moment even when a ‘run’ was over. I always knew there’d be a next time. I could see no end in sight” (47-48).
Though she’s repelled by many of the sex acts that she’s required to perform, Jaycee also believes that she is helping Phillip with his sex problems. It isn’t until years after her captivity that she concludes, “Deep inside Phillip Garrido is a very selfish man, looking only to gratify himself as much as possible while still projecting to the world a selfless and caring man” (48).
Eventually, Phillip allows Jaycee to stay “Next Door” permanently. She is grateful because the space is larger, more comfortable, and contains a color TV. One day, Phillip arrives to introduce his wife, Nancy. He tells Jaycee that his wife will be bringing the girl her meals from then on. Phillip cautions that Nancy may be jealous of Jaycee at first, but she helped Phillip abduct the girl because Nancy doesn’t like gratifying Phillip’s sexual urges either. Over time, Nancy becomes friendlier and brings Jaycee toys and books. The strange little family begins to spend more time together in Jaycee’s quarters, where they share meals and watch movies.
When Jaycee turns 13, Nancy says that Phillip has gone away for a month to an island owned by a rich friend. Jaycee is delighted not to go on any “runs” with him. She wants Nancy to stay Next Door with her, and Nancy admits to to feeling guilty about assisting in Jaycee’s abduction: “ She says it’s hard for her to be with me. She tells me she wished and prayed the morning they took me that Phillip would get a migraine and not be able to go through with it. I think to myself, Me, too” (56). When Phillip returns, Jaycee learns that he was in prison for a parole violation and now has an ankle tracker. The girl wonders if this will be the end of her ordeal but secretly knows that it isn’t.
Chapters 1-9 Analysis
The initial sequence recounts the events related to Jaycee’s abduction in chronological order. The first part of each chapter is written from the viewpoint of an 11-year-old, but the author appends a section called “Reflections” that allows her to look back on the experience from an adult perspective. The events she describes are chaotic, and her reflections on the experience are random observations rather than focused insights. As she tells the reader in the introduction, she is not utilizing an orderly narrative technique because she is trying to convey a sense of the chaos of her early days with the Garridos.
These chapters introduce all the major themes of the book. We see Phillip’s aberrant behavior both as Jaycee experiences it in real-time and in her later reflections. As an adult, she recognizes that Phillip is a sociopath, but as a child, she sees him as an adult who has taken charge of her life for her own good. While his decisions might be abhorrent, she doesn’t question the wisdom of his instructions.
Although mentally unbalanced, Phillip is quite adept at manipulating his captive, and the reader can see his intention to make the girl utterly dependent on him. Jaycee is aware of how much she needs his care. He has taken away everything that once belonged to her. Whatever she receives going forward will be due to his benevolence. She quickly adapts to the situation to survive and learns to obey without arguing.
The theme of enablers of abuse is introduced when Nancy enters the picture. She sees herself as a sad figure who unwillingly goes along with her husband’s obsessions. However, even as a child, Jaycee is quick to understand that Nancy isn’t a helpless victim under her husband’s control. She enables him not only with her passivity but with her active assistance in capturing and imprisoning Jaycee.
