Circle of Trust

Justification. Understanding. These words are significant because they are sought when the unexplainable, the insane, and the incomprehensible are faced. The Columbine killers listened to Marilyn Manson and played first-person shooter games; the woman who drowned her children in the bathtub was suffering from postpartum depression; the radical Muslim bomber believed he would receive martyrdom for his act; Norman Bates's mother told him to do it. From reality to fantasy, justification is needed by the human species. What we cannot understand, we cannot face.

The pedophile has taken center stage recently, with appearances on Oprah no less. However, some truth: The label "pedophile" is poorly understood by the general public, and the concept of female predators is even less implicit. The adage "what makes them tick" still swirls in the air around us. They are not tolerated even amongst the lowest levels of human existence. In prisons they are attacked, beaten, and ostracized. When they are among us, they are pushed to the fringes of the world, existing in the seams between normal and obscene. In Tom Perrotta's Little Children (2004), a scene depicts a known pedophile entering a public swimming pool. When the parents, who are lounging idly around the pool's edge, realize his presence, they scurry to gather their children. The children run from the pool, splashing and screaming, leaving the man in the center wearing his goggles, flippers, and snorkel. The police are called. The man shouts to the crowd that he simply wants to cool off. What is pressed outwardly and what exists on the fringes is often that which is least comprehensible. To humanize pedophilic acts is nearly impossible, but to strive to understand them is not.

RR, the main character in Elisabeth Sheffield's Fort Da: a report, exhibits many characteristics of a traditional pedophile. She marries her target's uncle, thereby creating a relationship with the boy that can foster trust—a key weapon in any child predator's arsenal. She "grooms" the child: buying him several gifts for Christmas, spending time with him in his own environment, keeping him happy, and intentionally—at times—evoking memories of Aslan's deceased mother to be close to him. At one point during a scene at a German Christmas bizarre, RR sheds her adult façade and joins him in a game of hacky sack. The act causes Aslan to reminisce about his mother. RR sees this as an opportunity to seduce the boy. She slept with Aslan while he was suffering from a sleep condition (Kleine-Levin Syndrome) that causes him to fall into a deep, coma-like slumber for days at a time. RR, however, wishes to extend the relationship. Even Aslan's namesake, clearly derived from C.S. Lewis's noble, Christ-figure lion, stirs memories of Lewis's novel for RR and draws out a love-lust for childhood and innocence. This leads RR into decisions that she makes with a clear understanding of consequences but without much fear.

Though it is easy to label RR as a "monster" (she does so herself in the early parts of the novel), it is not as easy to simply dismiss the relationship she develops with Aslan, which appears mutual. It must be remembered, as a reader trudges through Fort Da: a report, that while RR exhibits many of the classic pedophile traits, she also possesses traditional unreliable narrator traits. The "unreliable narrator" has become a bit of a cliché in modern fiction as, by definition, all first-person narrators are naturally unreliable. In RR's case, it is clear she possesses a purpose for unreliability. Narrators who are simply liars are not nearly as interesting as narrators who lie for a reason, and RR surely has a reason to lie. As a result, to believe that her relationship with Aslan is mutually beneficial and satisfactory is difficult to accept.

Where Fort Da: a report succeeds the most is in Sheffield's truthful and unflinching portrayal of RR. Many writers would stumble through this subject matter, but Sheffield...