Morality in Fiction
Why 'complex' isn't automatically better.
Have you ever read or watched a story where one of the villains seem to be, in your opinion, to treated too harshly? Someone who is treated with scorn above and beyond what seems fair? Or perhaps the heroes are a bit too lenient when it comes to forgiving a character for their wrongdoing? Morality, redemption and condemnation are complex subjects and not everyone will agree with your take on them. But there is an added complication when it comes to fiction, as it needs to conform to certain conventions in order to work. If you want the philosophy of your characters’ moral decisions to land right, it’s less to do with the morality itself, and more to do with if it gels with the character’s role in the story. So, let’s dig into this issue a bit and explore why moral decisions by characters can sometimes rub the audience the wrong way.
In stories aimed at young children, the morality tends to be black and white. There are good people and bad people, there is rarely any crossover between the two camps, and their motivations are never explored. They do good things because they’re the good guys and vice versa. For slightly older audiences, some nuance may be applied; typically, as villains joining the heroes’ side. Some exploration of their motivations may occur, but it will be extremely surface level. They will either not have appreciated the harm they were doing, or a personal experience of what it’s like to be treated the way they have treated their victims will make them change their ways.
What you may have noticed with these first two examples is that the moral issues are almost entirely being dealt with in a vacuum. Good and evil are being chosen entirely on their philosophical virtues, with very little consideration for circumstances which may make choosing one easier than the other. This is a feature, not a bug, of stories for young audiences, as the purpose of morality in these stories is to encourage children to strive to do good.
The first attempts at genuine moral complexity typically come when we get to fiction aimed at young adults. This is partly because that’s the age when many people start to understand that good and evil are not just a simple binary. Of course, another reason is to set up the redemption of popular antagonists (more on that in a bit). The young adult territory in fiction is where rivals falling to evil, villains being redeemed (sometimes both for the same character) and so many related tropes flourish. It’s also where the reasons for a person’s redemption or corruption start to be explored in a bit more depth, although there is still a clear distinction between who is good and evil. Adult fiction is typically where the moral complexity gets closer to real life. Where generally good people can do awful things, while bad people can still do good deeds.
Of course, these summaries are rather generalized. There are kids shows (like Avatar the Last Airbender) which can delve into moral nuance surprisingly well, while plenty of fiction aimed at adults has the good guys and bad guys clearly defined and separate. But they serve as good examples of what’s broadly expected in each selection, and why each approach to morality works. And more importantly, that all of them work, which is something which must be kept in mind by all aspiring writers. Because it touches on the deciding factor of whether or not a character’s moral position works:
Does it match, or conflict with, the character’s role in the story?
The best example, when discussing this issue, is redemption, as it’s an issue which bumps up against the heart of the point I’m trying to make. Many authors seem to enjoy adding characters being redeemed to their stories, just as many people in their audiences want to see it. Redemption can be a tricky storyline to pull off if you aren’t careful about balancing things. Make your character’s pre-redemption actions too extreme (or suddenly decide to redeem a villain because they’re getting popular), and you make it hard for your readers to accept it. They may be witty and handsome, but if they’ve been killing people because they cut them off in traffic, it’s going to strain suspension of disbelief for your characters to welcome them into their friend group. Meanwhile, watering down their evil deeds too much is a problem if your story needs them to be a compelling villain before their redemption.
Redemption can be done well if you put in the work, but I’ve noticed an odd opinion related to it online. There seems to be an assumption, by some people, that even if you aren’t going to redeem a villain, there should be some sympathetic elements to their characterization. A clear example of this would be Malekith, main antagonist of MCU phase 2 film ‘Thor the Dark World’, and an utter waste of Christopher Eccelstone’s talents. Malekith’s ultimate goal is to make use of standard MacGuffin ‘the ether’ to destroy the universe and return the nine realms to darkness. This is a genocide on a scale that makes Thanos’ plan for the infinity stones seem unambitious and yet, the film tries to make Malekith seem a bit more sympathetic. They do this by having a scene of him lamenting about barely being able to ‘remember a time before the light’; treating him as someone desperate to restore the home lost to him.
Unsurprisingly this didn’t have much impact on the audience, because being sympathetic and morally nuanced didn’t fit with his role as a superhero movie villain who was trying to destroy the universe. Having a tragic backstory doesn’t justify a villain’s misdeeds in the present, and it doesn’t automatically make their characterization stronger. Before you try to redeem a character, make them seem more sympathetic, or do anything really, you need to ask yourself how this will help the story. If you want your villain to be sympathetic and believably redeemable, you need to build your story from the ground up to accommodate that. Because moral complexity or sympathetic backgrounds for villains don’t automatically make a story better. Sauron from Lord of the Rings doesn’t physically appear in the story (outside of a flashback in the film version), but his impact on the plot makes him a powerful and effective villain because of the clearly evil acts done on his orders. He doesn’t have a secret tragedy which drove him to evil (he wasn’t always evil, but his backstory in the Silmarillion does nothing to excuse his descent into villainy), because that wouldn’t support his role as the big bad of the story.
In the end, good writing is what works, and good characterization is having a logical line of actions and consequences which believably lead to the choices they make. As long you fulfil that criteria, they can be as good, evil, or morally complex as you need them to be.