Just about
every fantasy story is based on the struggle between good and evil. How many
dark lords have been defeated by the hero and his band of friends? How many
wicked witches have been vanquished by innocent youths? How many dark wizards have
met their end against the gifted brave? How many warlords have been defeated by
the noble king? I could go on and on. The battle between good and evil is the
foundation for almost every kind of fiction (fantasy, action, thriller,
suspense, horror, etc). We go to the movies and we sit expecting to root for
the “good” guy against the “bad” guy. It’s common in our culture, and it’s
common in our nature. Mythology and folklore have been saturated with it for
centuries.
In today’s
fantasy fiction, there are times where we expect to root for the antihero.
There are times where we see the lines between good and evil blurred. We’ve come
to a place where the “all-good” hero and the “all-bad” villain no longer
appeals, and shows no realism. It’s funny to see the genre which was supposed
to be a vehicle of discovering the fantastic and speculative—to take us away
from reality—is now being forced to make things as realistic as possible (in
which I agree with). But I think the main purpose is to make things believable
in the author’s created world, while giving the reader characters that are
realistic.
It seems
like today’s modern fantasy is trying to veer away from characters that are
good and evil, and just make the characters grey (or amoral). This is a good
thing for the genre, but it’s not good if this is done only to rebel against
the old tradition of good versus evil. It should be done because that’s what
the story calls for, and that’s who that character is. Also, a character
shouldn’t be made dark just to put a dark spin on the story. There should be a
believable reason why that character is that way.
There’s the
belief that there is no absolute good or evil. But if someone believes in an
all-good higher power, and believes that any force that defies that all-good
higher power is evil, then there is absolute good and evil, in that concept. If
someone does not believe in an all-good higher power, but believes that society
sets the standards of what is right and wrong, then there is a degree of good
and evil; for if anyone goes against what your society believes to be the right
thing, then that person could be seen as evil in a way, and vice versa.
In the real
world, there is good versus evil. That’s realistic. The generation known as the
Greatest Generation, who fought Nazis in World War II, were not saints, but
they were the good guys, going up against an evil empire. What Hitler did was
evil. The Allies that fought him were good. That man that took those girls in Ohio and held them captive in his house
for a decade, doing terrible things to them, did evil; and the people that
helped those girls escape did good. A person that walks into an elementary
school and slaughters children does evil; the people that tried to save those
children, and tried to stop the murderer were good. The people that go and blow
up innocent men, women and children are evil; the people that fight to stop
those people are good. Do you see what I’m getting at here? Unfortunately, in
our world, we see the evil that people do all the time. Fortunately, we see the
good that people do all the time as well.
The key
point here is that the struggle against good and evil is a part of our world,
and of our existence, since the dawn of man. The battle of good and evil
happens in the world, and it happens inside each and every person, as they make
the choice to do the right or wrong thing everyday. This is reality, and this
is the good against evil that we should see in fantasy fiction. So if an author
is only going to give us grey characters, then show us readers why that
character is that way. Also, show us the struggle inside the character as he/she
strives to be a person that does the “right” thing; or if he/she strives to do
the “wrong” thing.
So, authors
of the dark and gritty, don’t try to make it an effort to exclude good and evil
from your stories; but try making an effort to make your stories more realistic
by including good and evil in the degree that your story calls for. Again, this
could be an external struggle or an internal struggle for the character(s).
I think the
things that bother us modern readers, in regards to the old-fashioned good
versus evil plot, is that the hero and the villain have no depth. They’re just
put there to fight each other, with nobility as the hero’s reason, and power
and greed as the villain’s excuse. Readers want to get into the soldiers’
minds, and into the Nazis’ minds, so that the struggle becomes an explosion of
good story, with depth and conflict; and the climax at the end is not
predictability (even though you know the good guys will win), but a conclusion
where you feel the triumph of the protagonists, because you fell in love with
them, and you wanted them to succeed.
Click here to see Part 2 of this post.
RELATED
POSTS:
Good vs Evil – Part 2
