Bias/Words >> Impact on us

     In just ten years from now, what do you think would be the most memorable part of your high school life? Let me guess… is it overloading your schedule with a bunch of AP courses and stressing all day and night studying for your exams? Is it all the friendships you managed to create and all the fun events you’ve gone to? Or maybe, it’s when we all somehow suffered through online learning for a year and cheated our way through most of our classes :’) 

        While I do think all these are memorable, I wouldn’t say MOST memorable. For me, I think it is all the unnecessary dramas that I have encountered or heard… I swear I have more important matters in my life, but there is nothing more entertaining than all the dramas circulating in high school (unless you’re the center of that drama obviously). And no, this is not me gaining pleasure from minding other people’s business. In fact, it is kind of the opposite. I don’t really care about the drama itself, but I love how much people try to exaggerate it and misinform. 

This leads to the topic I want to discuss through this blog: how an author’s degree of passion for a particular subject affects the accuracy of the story. How easily language and diction can offer misleading information and impose bias in the audience as well. And lastly, why words are perhaps the most dangerous element in humanity, and why we, as naïve human beings incapable of capturing every knowledge present in the media, should stay cautious to potential biases.

I think the best way to address this matter is through the most recent book I’ve read called Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (a super interesting novel, I strongly recommend by the way). It is a classical, romantic novel. Oftentimes, when we think of romance, we refer to classic stories such as Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare or… I don’t know, the Titanic by James Cameron. At the core of these novels is a romantic obsession between two characters that leads to an inevitable, tragic ending. Likewise, Lolita offers a similar storyline through two characters named Humbert and Lolita, however, in a first-person narrative. A diary he wrote in jail before his death sentence. But with a twist…

        Let me explain. 

“Lolita, the light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta.” Right off the bat, readers can sense Humbert’s obsession for this woman, which comes from losing a dearly loved girl named Annabel at a young age and searching for a girl exactly like her. The overly exaggerated nature of the introduction captures Humbert’s wholehearted devotion to her, hence the quote “light of my life.” The scene is highly relatable to the balcony scene from West Side Story, where Tony expressively sings out the name Maria. Because both scenes are so dramatic, we, the readers, would automatically come to a conclusion that Lolita will also be a story of love, an intense one perhaps.

Balcony scene between Maria and Tony from the West Side Story.

            

            And it is, just not in the most expected way.

The novel only remains romantic through Humbert’s perspective, which is key to realizing and reminding yourself that the book is one of the most cursed stories to exist. At the heart of the novel, it is an account of rape, incest, and murder— how a 37-year-old managed to encounter and have sex with “nymphets,” which Humbert describes as 9 to 14-year-old prostitutes. Eventually, he finally comes across a girl named Dolores, who he calls Lolita. Lolita, based on physical traits, reminds him of Annabel, and throughout the upcoming courses of the novel, he meticulously plans to trap and subconsciously rape her, who is only twelve years old. While the absurd nature of the novel due to Humbert’s immorality is evidently established in the novel and easily recognizable by my summary so far, it is also clouded by Humbert’s writing style. His word choices, perspective, and language almost transform this disturbing work into rather an enchanting masterpiece, distracting the reader from the imminent truth.

How exactly is this done? 

I strongly believe that it is mostly due to the way the story is told. Because the novel wants the readers to be the judge of his actions, he does not fully uncover the dark reality of his romantic affairs with Lolita, but rather, he goes out of his way to justify his wrongdoings. For example, after masturbating to Lolita with her possessions, he states that he did it “without impairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done… still Lolita was safe.” (Humbert 59) Here, the truth is subtly intertwined with optimism— while his act is evidently immoral and perverted, he sways the readers to believe that at least nothing has gone terribly wrong, which indeed is true. And ultimately it is this series of justifications and lens that allows him to deceive the readers into thinking that his relationship with Lolita is a perfectly normal, two-way relationship.

Humbert in real life be like...

            In fact, some critics actually believe that all of this could be potentially normal if we disregard the age difference. To this, I must fully disagree. A relationship that only involves sexual desires cannot be called genuine, because it is only full of lust and objectifying each other. If Humbert truly cared for Lolita not only as a lover but also as a step-father, Humbert wouldn’t have been so “uninterested in the preoccupations, desires, and the dreams that are fuel to growth” (Brewer) in Lolita; he should have respected her feelings and opinions. Although his vivid language of Lolita consistently masks the reality of the relationship, it is fairly one-sided if viewed from an objective standpoint.

Furthermore, literary critics had tried to present Lolita’s viewpoint of the whole incident (not shown in the novel). Shockingly, a stark contrast exists between the story told in her and Humbert’s perspective. In Morrissey’s poem, which examines the scene further from Lolita’s standpoint, the lines “smell of stale blood in my throat / as you breathe through my mouth… I wake to the wet slap of sweat / moving skin against the skin” presents sex “as an injury or a nightmare.” (Meek). While Humbert's word choices portray his romantic life as bliss, Lolita’s perspective here evidently shares the experience as a traumatizing event, something that can never be forgotten. To her, the haunting image of being sexually assaulted by an old man will be engraved to her mind and soul for her lifetime.

Lolita has demonstrated to me how easily stories can shift depending on the writer’s lens and word choices. It was essentially Humbert’s overly passionate desires and unwillingness to accept his misdoings that led him to a fairly one-sided story. I believe that a biased stance on a particular subject on any topic can pose a lot of problems… not only in literature and stories like this but also in politics.

Take Hitler’s gradual rise to power as an example. I believe that we can narrow his climb to power into two essential factors that allowed him to manipulate the minds of all of Germany. First, of course, would be through physical force with his demanding military, but second, which is the point I would like to examine further, is his persuasion through his propagandas and the press, which only he and the Nazis had control of. 

Hitler rising to power by manipulating all of Germany

In order to garner massive, unconditional support from millions of people, Hitler could not have done it with brute force—he would need to establish a tactic that could brainwash everyone into thinking that his political ideologies are the best solution to eliminating poverty and establishing social order and liberty. By controlling the press system, he continuously exposes the citizens to the pros of a communistic nation, manipulating the minds into believing that the root of evilness is within a democratic nation. This limited perspective that he presents to his citizens was effective in the 1930s, which certainly shows how gaining a one-sided perspective on a particular subject, which in this case would be on politics and government ideology, can become dangerous if we account for all the tragedies that followed up during the time period.

Another element to factor into Hitler’s imminent success was the degree of passion and charisma he conveyed through his voice, which was crucial in appealing to people’s emotions. By “cultivat[ing] his charismatic image to convince people to carry out his wishes,” he establishes democratic nations as a common enemy. Again, the tone of his speeches alongside his welcoming diction is what makes words themselves inherently so powerful.

Link to one of Hitler's most charismatic speech

The truth is that language is an essential building block to our human life and human evolution; everyone learns how to speak, write, and read because they are ways we can learn, grow, and communicate with one another. Combined with the minds of a group and the whole society, we can continuously progress to build a place that would benefit all of our lives. This is why words are also dangerous—everyone is exposed to it literally everywhere. 

The most dangerous element of words is also why it makes them so interesting. They have what is called a denotative (the exact meaning) and connotative (implications) definitions.  Denotation can be reinterpreted as subjects like math or science; it is very literal and only helps get our points across. On the other hand, a word's connotation is what touches on the audience’s heart and is what allows a writer to appeal to different emotions. Richard Taflinger, a professor in advertising and speech communication, once mentioned that you can win over someone’s interest “if you can make your audience agree with your point of view on an emotional level,” and this is what really comes down to modern-day politics, debates, and even presidential elections. Arguably, one of President Biden’s greatest strengths is his ability to sympathize with people and understand their sufferings and hardships, and highlighting this trait in the Presidential debate allowed him to garner the support of millions of Americans. 

Especially with technologies evolving in our society, the accessibility to media is crucial for us to understanding our societal structure and the discriminatory prejudices that occur. However, sometimes I worry that our society is not progressing in the right direction— as the media does give access to information fast, a lot of teenagers, including me, are also very quick with our decisions and thought process. We tend to blindly accept our sources without doubting the credibility of them. 

This is perhaps how misinformation spreads so quickly on the internet. “What happens is that people pick nuggets of fact and stitch them into a false or misleading narrative that fits their own worldview. These narratives then become reinforced in online communities that foster trust and thus lend credibility to misinformation.” (Woo) Sounds familiar? Yup, this is how high school drama spreads as well. 

While we should always try to be open to possibilities of bias and misinformation, we are not, and I do believe that this is the single greatest flaw in our society today.