The accidental sympathizer

In my first year seminar class, we were assigned to read Lolita. As any sophisticated student would do, I looked up the spark notes plot summary to get an idea about what the hell I was about to endure (I'd heard many horror stories regarding this text wanted to be prepared). I saw it was about a pedophile, pondered for a bit about the irony, and figured I could move on with me life.

Oh, how very wrong I was. As soon as I started reading about this Humbert Humbert fellow, I forgot that he was our chief villain, and began to sympathize with him. Obviously I don't want to have sex with twelve year old girls, but despite this noticeable difference in our characters, I still found the narrator relateable (to the english profs that are currently reading this...yes, that is a word). I, like Humbert, simply want a comfortable living situation. And sometimes I just feel I have no control in the situation at hand, and will be forever victim to all my faults and insecurities. Humbert and I both feel pain when a loved one is far away. I can bet that the reader of Lolita comes from the same roots as Humbert as just wanting to feel loved.

This feeling of sympathy scared me a little bit...how could I even fathom having pity for a crazy, malicious predator of a man? Hearing his story from first person made understanding Humbert's motives not such an absurd notion. But do we really want to admit to ourselves that we can come to recognize the vulnerability of creeps? It may just be me and my messed up brain, but I'm wondering if we read Sandusky's story in first person, would we be more likely to feel pity? Just to clarify, I do not feel sorry for Sandusky, nor do I want to see him anywhere except locked behind bars for five bajillion lifetimes. But if a first person narrative can make a fictional pedophile a sympathetic character, who's to say the same wouldn't happen for a real life version?

It's uncomfortable to think that a sob story we may have blindly felt sorry for came from an undeserving scumbag. It could work the other way too--someone could present an innocent being as cold and heartless and because of the rhetoric of the article/story/book/telegram from aliens we mistakenly accuse someone for being a bad person. Can we find any hard truth when we so passively follow the way a story is told? Characters such as Humbert aren't flat or in black and white...which makes it scary that someone who is so clearly messed up can still be viewed as humane.

A little dark today, so to lighten the mood, I'll post something that struck my brain as soon as I started writing "Humbert" for the umpteeth time: