A couple months back, I was browsing through my twitter feed when a retweet for someone’s blog post arrested my interest, one written by a Miz Sarah Harian and titled “Moral Ambiguity in New Adult: We’re Not in Middle Earth Anymore.” I assume that, just based on that title, you might have pieced together the topic of this post: morality in fiction.
Okay, time for a disclaimer. This is not a response post. Truth be told, this essay arose merely by reading the title of the afore mentioned blog post. By the time I actually read said post, I had already formulated what I wished to say here, and, in acknowledgement to the retweet that sparked it, I referenced it in the title. That is the only intentional connection. If you wish to know more about the post, I linked to it through its title for you. Go read it. While I definitely don’t agree with everything Miz Harian says in her post, I do think there’s some good material to chew on in there. That said, please do not take my post as confronting Miz Harian’s post. That is not my purpose, nor will I do a very good job. Now, back to the regularly scheduled blog post.
Morality in fiction is… complicated, especially for the Judeo-Christian, who recognizes the existence of objective moral truth. Such an understanding of morality in the morally relativistic world of today is often labeled as old, flat, less interesting, too easy, etc. I have read such views many times. In today’s books, the audience appears to desire “gray morals,” with the lines of morality, especially in “adult” fiction, blurred, sometimes even beyond recognition and remembrance, and/or villains are sympathetic, sometimes even more so than the heroes. Attempts to make villains truly evil, like J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sauron or C. S. Lewis’s White Witch, rather than just mistaken or unfortunate can get written off as constructing a “mustache-twirling, cape-wearing, ‘muhahahah’ villain who’s only goal is to rule the world because EVIL!” Nope! Villains must be fully fleshed out characters, too, with hidden motivations and/or tragic pasts or else they are joke.
Or are they?
If this “old school” portrayal of morals, without much moral ambiguity (if any), is so inferior, why do people still gravitate to them? Why do people still read, year after year, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, traveling to Middle Earth, where there are clear goods and evils? Why do people still write such stories? Why does this perception of morality thrive?
For the Judeo-Christian worldview, the answer is simple. People invest in stories portraying objective moral rights and wrongs because there are objective moral rights and wrongs. The reason humans dive into stories where pure good battles, and eventually defeats, pure evil is because, every day, every minute, every second, every moment God (pure good), in the most awesome, most truly epic or all stories, battles, and defeats, Satan (pure evil). That reality validates the traditional relationship of heroes and villains. Now, these “binary” stories still need to be well written, and I think a lack of skill probably contributed to the rejection of the “pure evil villain” archetype. However, such is required of the “complex villain.” both simple villains and complex villains, both clear morals lines and “gray” morality, can tell excellent stories, and I think we need both types.
Sometimes it truly is not clear what is the correct moral choice. Is killing ever permissible? Is stealing ever right? Is revenge just? What is justice? When given the choice between saving your friend and saving a stranger from death, what is the right thing to do? These are all hard questions that involve at least a closer look at the lines of morality. However, “hard” does not mean “disproving.” Man is fallen, as is his reason and ability to discern right from wrong, but that does not change their existence. Even “gray,” “sympathetic” villains can be shown to be objectively wrong.
Returning to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, C. S. Lewis, in his review of the story, had this to say:
Motives, even in the right side, are mixed. Those who are now traitors usually began with comparatively innocent intentions. Heroic Rohan and imperial Gondor are partly diseased. Even the wretched Smeagol, till quite late in the story, has good impulses; and... what finally pushes him over the brink is an unpremeditated speech by the most selfless character of all.1
We, as the audience, can see that a character is acting in an objectively immoral way. Morality is clear. Good and evil are not mixed; it is true, though, that once good people and nations are “diseased” and fell into evil. On the other hand, Tolkien also does not deny that evil might begin with mistaken intentions or thoughtless words. Even “binary” can be complex (just as a computer programer). However, even with this complexity, Tolkien does not succumb to the idea that all villains and their cohorts must be “gray” or sympathetic to be good villains; within his story are clearly evil characters rejecting every miligram of our sympathy.
In conclusion, despite the cry for “more complex villains,” I think we still need stories of objectively evil villains and objectively good heroes. We need reminders that there is true evil, and there is true good. We still need Sauron, an embodiment of evil that wishes for the destruction and enslavement of all that is good, in battle with Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, and their friends, beacons of goodness and hope in the midsts of darkness. At the same time, we need Smeagol, the wicked but pitiable, the one who gave into temptation and so destroyed himself. We need Victor Hugo’s Javert, driven by justice and a desire to do what is right but mistaken in his zeal for justice, reminding us of the complexity and motivations of human beings. Meanwhile, we need C. S. Lewis’s witch, Jadis, beautiful but cold and proud, a wicked woman who freezes all that is jovial and good in her yearning for power and control, to show us the destructive nature of sin. We need Darth Vader, a young man deceived into villainy, and Emperor Palpatine, the deceiver. We need the Joker, pure chaos and anarchy, and we need Mr. Freeze, driven by a desire to save his beloved wife.
Whatever villain, whatever story, we write, though, we must never give up on morality. As Aragorn says to Éomer, even facing such times and events as theirs, one must judge what to do “As he has ever judged… Good and ill have not changed.”2 We have been on vacation from that truth long enough. It’s about time we return home to Middle Earth.
1 Lewis, C. S. "Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings." C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection & Other Short Pieces. Ed. Lesley Walmsley. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000. 519-525. Print.
2 Tolkien, J. R. R. The Two Towers. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978. Print.
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