Ophelia's Challenge: Defense Team Opening Statement

Raving Lunatic · Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:09 pm

In the last few comments of Humbert Humbert in 2008, Ophelia offered a challenge. Write Humbert's defense team's opening statement. There are no prizes involved just a lively discuss. Are you up to the challenge?

Raving Lunatic · Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:36 pm

Love is a basic human emotion. From the time of birth, it is something that the human psyche craves. Most of us are lucky enough to get this from our parents and family. Some of us never fully receive this love. Along with love comes trust. Trust to know that this person will love and take care of you when you cannot support yourself emotionally. Trust in knowing that when the chips are down, you have a shoulder to lean on. Again, most of us have parents or family members to this bond of trust with. However, Mr. Humbert did not. Having his mother die while he was an infant and an absent father, Humbert searched in others for this love and trust. In his teens, he developed a strong emotional bound with a young girl. In later years, it was thought they would be married; however, sickness took probably the love of Mr. Humbert's life. He was then resorted to search for that love and trust anywhere he could. This searching started his unbalanced mind set.
Yes, Mr. Humbert was married to a young girl. But she betrayed him. Thus causing him several breakdowns and several years roaming the world looking for both the love and the trust he knew that he deserved. He married Charlotte Haze believing that he could have that what he was so desperately searching for. However, his heart was still longing for his young love of his childhood. When his wife died from a horrible accident, he knew he had to care for his stepdaughter, twelve year old, Dolores Haze. That is when he suffered another break. For his stepdaughter recalled his memory of his childhood sweetheart. They roamed the country for two years exploring and taking full advantage of the love they felt for each other. Is this wrong? Yes, both morally and legally, it is wrong. But you see, Mr. Humbert was not in the right state of mind. He is grieving and needing to be loved and trusted.
After two years of courtship, Dolores leaves and breaks Mr. Humbert once again. This time he is pushed too far. He spends the better part of three to five years searching for her. But she has disappeared leaving him desperate, alone, frightened, and shattered. Shattered, ladies and gentleman, this man who is a learned man. He is a well read, a world traveler, successful author, and comes from a wealthy family. This man who in every right should be on top of the world is brought down by a timid little girl. He finally hears word from her and learns of the situation of her disappearance. She was taken away by Mr. Quilty, the victim.
Mr. Quilty forced Mr. Humbert's beloved Dolores's into vile acts of a sexual nature and then threw her away like garbage. This revelation widened the chasm of Mr. Humbert's mental break. He could not let this terrible deed go unpunished. He tracked down Mr. Quilty and shot him. He doesn't deny it. However, is he truly responsible? Did Mr. Humbert's longing for love and trust bring him to this act of vicious murder? If it was our daughter, would we not do the same? We intend to prove that Mr. Humbert's lack of sanity and well being caused him to commit an act of murder. It is love and trust that build a civilized world. It is love and trust that builds bonds of strength and hope. But if you take away that love and trust, do you have any hope at all?

kbullfrog · Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:04 pm

We do not deny that this man in front of you did, indeed, commit the crimes he is here accused of. however, ladies and gentlemen, look upon this soul and find that part of yourself that would do the same. he comes to you, hands open, pleading that you may salvage the rest of his tortured life. he is a man of passion, and as he followed his passion to the letter, the letter of plato and aristotle and foucault, these actions were logical and sound, and also correct.
Humbert Humbert's life begins as a young man full of privilege. he attended the right schools, had the right friends, the right books he read. he met and fell madly in love with his music teacher, Ms. Behuzohov....he was but a lad of 12 years when he was seduced, and was but then also the seducer. he had watched his father play his games with the chambermaids and various women that worked in his office, where he spent afternoons after school. he knew what women wanted to hear and what they would respond to. soon, Ms. Behuzohov returned his ardency, but was tragically killed in a bus accident. Mr. Humbert never got over his first foray into love and passion, and the brevity of life. he decided that in some way, he must stay young for his dear Ms. Behuzohov, and so he focused on that year of his life when he was most happy, 11 years of age. he turned his studies to the Greeks, namely Aristotle, and took to focusing on learning this ancient way of thought that is so foreign from our own. how the eye may see only because there is a viscous medium transporting that image to the eye itself...passion, for Humbert, became it's Latin root, pathos, or pati, "to suffer", and that Humbert realized was his form of expression, suffering.

to be continued, i wish there was a way to save this without posting....

Ophelia · Wed Dec 17, 2008 4:56 am

Well done, lady lawyers! :clap2:

I'd say so far Raving Lunatic has done her best effort - in the circumstances- to get Humbert off the hook, whereas the first part of K Bullfrog's statement made me think that your average jury would suspect he might just be the right sort of pervert for the electric chair.
Let's see whether he saves his neck with the second part of the speech...

Raving Lunatic · Wed Dec 17, 2008 8:37 am

To be honest I watch way too much Law and Order.

Forum rules

Ophelia's Challenge: Defense Team Opening Statement Tweet This Topic

Who is online

Chat Room Always Open!