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.
Themes
Inside the Sociopath’s World
In telling the story of her abduction and confinement, Jaycee uses a narrative technique that emphasizes isolated incidents, her emotional state at the time, photographs, journal entries, and free association to other periods of her life. This creates an intentional feeling of disjointedness for the reader because Jaycee’s chronic emotional state while under Phillip’s control is one of profound confusion. She writes:
This book might be confusing to some. But keep in mind throughout my book that this was a very confusing world I lived in. I think to truly begin to understand what it was like, you would have had to be there, and since I wish that on no one, this book is my attempt to convey the overwhelming confusion I felt during those years and to begin to unravel the damage that was done to me and my family (7).
While confusion is a useful tactic employed by sociopaths to immobilize their targets, it is also indicative of the mindset of sociopaths themselves. A psychiatric description of sociopathy includes such behaviors as impulsiveness, a constant need for stimulation, lack of empathy for others, risk-taking, inability to take personal responsibility, and shallow emotions. These characteristics are indicative of a person who lacks integrity. Integrity, in this sense, does not refer to morality. It refers to the structural integrity of a stable personality. As is obvious from Jaycee’s description, Phillip is not stable. He oscillates from depression to elation and fixates on one or another obsession as the mood takes him.
His behavior is analogous to a rudderless ship, veering this way or that without the ability to steer to a fixed destination. Jaycee’s confusion at the treatment she receives is based on Phillip’s own instability. What makes the situation even more confusing to a young child is that she is being guided by an adult who is wearing a mask of sanity. Jayce says, “I’ve learned that Phillip has never taken responsibility for his actions, so he invented a way to explain everything away” (170). Many of his elaborate explanations to excuse his egregious behavior would sound plausible to a child with a limited experience of life. Most children are taught to respect their elders and look to them for guidance.
Phillip invents alternative versions of reality in which he is infallible, can speak to demon angels, has been accorded special divine protection, and has invented a system to cure schizophrenia. When dealing with such a bizarre individual, Jaycee’s confusion turns out to be not only understandable but the only rational response to madness.
Enablers of Abuse
Phillip might not have succeeded in capturing and holding Jaycee for eighteen years without the assistance of others. Nancy is obviously complicit in all his schemes. In fact, as Phillip explains to Jaycee, part of the reason for abducting her is because Nancy doesn’t enjoy indulging Phillip’s sex addiction herself.
Ironically, Nancy seems to invite pity from Jaycee for her predicament. “I have asked her in the past to stay, but sometimes she says she can’t because she feels guilty for taking me. She says it’s hard for her to be with me” (56). Apparently, Jaycee is expected to feel bad for Nancy. In fact, the child does allow herself to fall for the pity ploy. At another point, Jaycee recognizes her feelings toward Nancy:
Sometimes I feel bad for not missing Nancy. But for the most part it is a relief for me to not have to endure her moods and the jealousy she harbored. She did have several opportunities to let me go, and I might never know why she chose not to (55).
In this quote, Jaycee deliberately uses the word “chose.” Clearly, she realizes that no matter how much Nancy tries to shift the blame to circumstances beyond her control, she is ultimately responsible for her own bad behavior.
To a lesser degree, we see Phillip’s mother as another enabler. Although it isn’t clear from the text, it is a documented fact that Mother Pat owns the home in which the Garridos live and has remained on the same property where Jaycee was held captive for 18 years. In Pat’s case, she enables her son’s bad behavior and contributes to his many abuses by seeing him as perfect. Jayce says, “She is getting really demented and the only one she is nice to is her darling son who could never do anything wrong. She says really mean things when I have to take her to the bathroom or walk her or exercise her. She hates everything except Phillip” (145). The reader is left to wonder whether Pat would ever have believed Jaycee’s story even if the girl had been able to tell it. She wishes to believe the best about her son and would probably let his atrocities go unchallenged.
Additional enablers of abuse are the well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual authorities who are supposed to monitor Phillip’s behavior. His psychiatrists give him convenient excuses for his bad behavior and medications to enable his addictions. His parole officers only make cursory inspections of the house. When reports are called in to the police by neighbors, they too only make half-hearted inspections of the property. This level of institutional neglect will cost the State of California dearly after Jaycee sues and wins a settlement of $20,000,000.
Imprisoning the Mind
After perusing Jaycee’s memoir, the reader may be left to wonder why she didn’t attempt to escape or free herself. Jaycee herself struggles to answer this question throughout her narrative. The answer lies not in her physical imprisonment but in the psychological prison that Phillip systematically builds to confine her.
When she is abducted, she is only 11 and has been conditioned to respect authority. She has already received negative feedback from her stepfather that makes her doubt her own judgment, so the precedent already exists in her mind. Jaycee is predisposed to believe whatever Phillip tells her because he is an adult. She says, “So many things confused me about Phillip and the things he would say. I could never believe Phillip was anything but sane and thought about each and every thing he did before he did it” (170). She sees him as an authority figure and herself as a naive child under his control.
Phillip finds a way to augment his authority over Jaycee by taking away her belongings, her clothing, and even her sense of spatial orientation. She believes she has been driven a very great distance from her family with no way to get back on her own. She says, “I feel this was all part of his plan to manipulate me into being compliant with him. He used his powers of persuasion to gain my trust. He became my entire world. I depended on him for food, water, my toilet. He was my only source of amusement” (29).
After a few years of reinforcing this dependent relationship, Phillip has imprisoned Jaycee’s mind to such a degree that she doesn’t need to be physically confined anymore. By the time of her second child’s birth, she is free to roam the back of the property without supervision. Phillip is confident of his control over her. She writes, “I am in another kind of prison now. Free to roam the backyard but still prisoner nonetheless. I feel I am bound to these people—my captors—by invisible bonds instead of constant handcuffs” (101).
Phillip has succeeded in eroding Jaycee’s sense of her own competence. She even has panic attacks during the family’s infrequent outings because she fears the outer world so much. At this stage of her imprisonment, she has multiple opportunities to escape but never tries. She has completely lost all sense of her own agency. Even if freed, she doubts that she could provide for herself and her girls. “I also feared whatever change would come. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I had the girls to take care of. But I wanted them to have a better life. I just couldn’t do it for myself. I needed someone to free me, but no one did” (108).
Because of the prison constructed in Jaycee’s own mind, she must wait for someone to open that door for her. Ironically, it is Phillip himself who presents the opportunity. His religious delusion and sense of divine protection make him bold enough to confront the authorities that he ought to avoid. Fortunately, Jaycee’s internal and external prison doors open on the same day that a prison door shuts on Phillip for the rest of his life.
