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Writers are often asked (OK, I am often asked) why I put bad things in stories about good people. What is the purpose, someone asks, of having war, terrible wounds, grisly deaths, and torture afflict characters? Is it to teach the character a lesson? Did the character deserve it? Or was enduring such things the only way to create a paladin?
These are theological questions, at root. Those who think (like Job’s “comforters” that bad things come from God to punish those who did wrong) will see the same events in a story differently than those who think bad things come from an evil power with specific aims and strategies–or those who think bad things come from human failings, and fall on individuals almost at random. The drunk driver weaving across the road is going to crash into some car…but which? And causing how much pain?
Writers use bad things for a variety of reasons, and in any particular story, the writer may have been influenced by any of them or a combination. First is the obvious: bad things exist in the world. Every day, around the world, hundreds (or more) people are being tortured by people who have power over them. Today. Right this minute. Men, women, children. Every day, around the world, thousands are at risk of political violence–invasions, insurrections, civil wars, international wars. It is certainly possible to write stories that do not involve war and torture, but it’s hardly a stretch to include them. And if one includes war, or torture, then it becomes important to show it in its complex reality.
Second, the classic Aristotelian story form holds a deep fascination for many people (readers, listeners, writers, storytellers) and that form includes a conflict or struggle. War offers the writer a conflict that allows the story to include both external and internal conflicts–lots of them, in many ways–and thus offers a fertile (but also challenging) setting for Story. In a story with overt conflict, readers are willing to accept the existence of, and pay attention to, many associated conflicts on many levels of experience.
Third, for the lesser writer, a war setting will grab attention in the presence of poorer writing. If you’re not that skilled at the craft, explosions and dramatic confrontations will attract at least some readers, and a veneer of technical expertise (not in writing but in weaponry or tactics) will attract more.
But what about torture? The cheap-grace approach is to use torture to prove that a villain is really really bad (only really-really bad people torture) or that the hero is really-really brave, or both. This is, in fact, as far as many readers go in understanding it…their reaction to a scene in which someone is tortured may be like mine to the extraneous courtesans in Scarpia’s apartment in the new production of Tosca at the Met. I already knew Scarpia was a mean SOB; he’d just sung another aria about how happy being a mean SOB made him; we didn’t need the three slinky females doing poses out of Cats.
Some readers then tangle themselves up trying to figure out if the intent is to redeem the hero by torture…the Purgatory approach to pain: it’s going to purify the hero’s soul. And some writers, if they’re of that theology, may in fact impose suffering on their heroes for that reason.
I’m not one of them. My view is that as social animals, we humans do like to play dominance games–we like power, we like influence, we like the front seats, the red carpet, the head table, etc. Research has shown that dominating–and receiving deference from others–raises the level of brain hormones that make us feel good. In some individuals, the desire to dominate and control others overcomes the equally strong (in most of us) associative instincts that also give us pleasure. Laughing with friends, hanging out with people who like us–those also raise the level of pleasure hormones. (One reason it’s important for kids to have happy experiences of social interaction is that this increases the likelihood they’ll seek out pleasant associations as adults.)
But there are the bad guys, and the bad guys get their kicks out of dominating, scaring, hurting others. Whatever influences led them to that state of mind, once they’re there, they’re a menace to society, whether it emerges as kidnapping young people to control, or as persons who–gathering like-minded subordinates–gain political power and dominate and harm a whole country.
Given that bad guys exist, anyone could run into one of them at any time. One could live next door to you–might have a captive in his/her basement. One could work in the same office and you’d never know unless you became a target of that rage to control. Thus, in a story, the protagonist may fall into cruel hands, either by pure chance, by carelessness, by deliberate self-sacrifice. Malice is always involved: the torturer may have targeted that particular victim, or a class of victims (boys under 12, wives of enemies), or any random person.
In the Paks books, the torture of Cal Halveric was an attack aimed at him, as his father’s son; the purpose of the attack was to demoralize Aliam Halveric and get him to leave the alliance. The attack was not Cal’s fault, and he did not deserve what happened to him. His ability to heal from the psychological as well as physical injuries revealed his character but did not create it.
Paks’s torment in Kolobia again resulted from a directed attack on her–the desire of Evil to ruin a paladin. Her carelessness with her helmet made the attack easier, but it would have come anyway. The long suffering of her slow partial recovery resulted from the limitations of the Fellowship of Gird–limitations which she neither caused nor understood. Her character was revealed all through books one and two of the Deed, both how she was developing into a possible paladin, and the distance left to go…and also revealed the flaws in the Girdish understanding of her and of good & evil in general.
She did not “need” that–she could have become a paladin in other ways–but in the long run she made out of that experience an unusually solid grasp of what she was and who she served. The final molding of her character came with healing, not punishment–the Kuakgan’s ability to draw out the last poison from her wounds and replace her simplistic understanding of courage and love with more nuanced and complex ones (I would never say complete…) and then that summer with the rangers in Lyonya, where her full paladin talents finally unfolded.
And that is what she took with her when she walked into that dirty little courtyard to exchange herself for the Duke and the others. What followed was not a “test” for her–not the gods saying “Well, let’s see if she can take this, and then she’ll be a true paladin.” She already was a paladin. And what do paladins do? Reveal the real nature of good and evil. Protect the weak. Banish fear. What fear most controlled those dominated by Liartian priests? The fear of pain, for them and for their families. The fear of those barbed whips, those public displays of cruel power.
Her willing endurance of torture mocked the whole power structure of evil in that place: it said “You don’t have to be afraid of the pain–you don’t have to give in because of its threat. There is another way. Good can endure.” It was the revelation of what had already been created out of her whole life–not just the bad things, but also the good things. It was a gift to those who had not believed that good could survive–who had been taught and believed that the bad guys always won and that’s why you had to submit and follow their orders.
Suffering, by itself, is not a tool for creating good character (Luap, after all, reacted to his hands being burned with resentment and never did get over himself.) It reveals existing character and may (by strong characters) be used, as such characters use every experience, to approach some goal of selfhood. It can create empathy (but doesn’t always) and teach strategies for dealing with future struggles (but doesn’t always.) The same act of cruelty is received differently by different characters–leads them to different attitudes, different future actions. That’s observable in real life, and is thus a truth available for fiction.
Similarly, healing does not negate suffering. Like most people, I’ve broken a few bones, had innumerable minor injuries, had some surgery. There’ve been psychological injuries as well. Having healed from them, being once more healthy and hale, the scars not visible, the damage overcome…does not mean the damage never happened. Does not mean the memory of it goes away. Or that later, some other injury might not re-activate the one that “healed.” So the healing that lets Paks go on and continue to be a paladin does not mean “Oh, nothing ever happened.” It did happen. It affected other people than her. The ripples from that particular rock in the water continue to shiver in the reflections of those who were there, and those who heard about it. Paks herself refused the Lady’s offer of forgetfulness….she understands that this, along with her earlier suffering, gives her both the empathy and the authority to say “I know how you feel” to someone who’s frightened of that bully down the road. (Just as flunking calculus–not a pleasant experience at all!–made me a better math tutor.)
My personal take on the whole question of bad things in fiction is that evil exists–there are bad people–and bad things happen to the human population without regard to whether they “deserved” it. What matters is not whether it’s deserved, but what the person does with it after it happens–what lessons that person chooses to take from it. I believe with Solzenitsyn that “the line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart.” That we do have choices, and that our choices matter. That our choices lead to consequences, and affect more than ourselves. That mistakes can be redeemed, though not undone–the word spoken, the act committed, exist in reality. But we can change, and by changing we can mitigate the damage we’ve done and keep from doing more.
Here endeth the overlong exposition of part of E’s theology underlying what she writes.
Comment by Dave Ring — November 12, 2009 @ 2:34 pm
Not overlong at all, given the weight of the topic and the depth and care of your thinking about it.
My theology (such as it is) has a great deal of trouble classifying faith as a virtue. In Paks’ ordeal, though, faith makes sense. Not faith that the gods would heal her later — I don’t think she expected that. But she had enough previous experience with suffering to believe that she could endure it, and that her sacrifice would affect those who witnessed it.
Comment by elizabeth — November 12, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
No, she didn’t expect to be healed. She did expect to endure, and to save the Duke and others (she didn’t know how many others.) Only gradually did she realize that she might also affect those who watched–that wasn’t her primary conscious aim–but paladins do what they’re called to do without always fully understanding all the implications.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — November 12, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
Elizabeth, you *had* to know I would post to this. The greatest difficulty some of my friends have with the Deed is what they view as the excessive nastiness of the torture. And yet most of these same people base the theological aspects of their worldview in a religion whose main symbol is an instrument of execution by maximum nastiness. Now, when I re-read the Deed, as I’ve done more than once, it’s hard for me to face Kolobia and the ordeal in Verella. Not because I thinks it’s too much but because I understand what you’re doing. I get it. I get why a heart breaks, and why a body may have to be broken, for the life of the world. So do your stories. As good as they are in other ways, they would not keep calling me back if they did not have at their heart that notion of the redemptive, ennobling, wisdom-producing capacity of suffering–provided it is endured with a generosity so hard to describe that only in narrative–Story with a capital S, as you put it–can it be sufficiently defined. (Which is why the theologians, or the best of them, never wander too far from the narrative basis of their traditions.)
Comment by elizabeth — November 12, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
Of course I knew you would, Kip.
What gets me about some readers is that they’re willing to take all kinds of nastiness in stride as long as the writer doesn’t make them look at the results…the actual pain, the actual damage, the actual consequences (for both victim and attacker) of hurting someone. They’ll tell the world they want “interesting, nasty” characters…that good is boring…but what they want is the game–the movie role of the Bad Boy that send (very safe) shivers down the spine.
Of course, there are also the readers that do not want their fiction to have anything upsetting in it…in other words, they want a long thick wall between themselves and their cozy life, and a terrifying reality.
I know you will join me in saying “No cheap grace!”
Comment by kyta — November 13, 2009 @ 4:54 am
I’m not feeling particularly articulate today, but I think that this is one of the elements of Paks’s (Paks’?) story that really grabs me and that feels so…right. As a reader, I buy into it completely, and it resonates with my own personal faith in a way that really touches my heart.
It’s hard to read the torture descriptions, particularly of Paks, and, especially when I first read them as an adolescent, I felt almost guilty reading it– I struggled with whether or not it was okay to enjoy the books despite the torture it contained. I even felt that way when Korryn was punished… trying to figure out how to justify enjoying a book that portrayed suffering.
That being said, I don’t think that the story would resonate with me so closely if Paks became a paladin without that, without healing not only from Gird but from the Kuakgan and other gods, without her self-sacrifice while still being a flawed, insecure human being.
Again, I’m not particularly articulate right now, but thanks for sharing this…
Comment by elizabeth — November 13, 2009 @ 8:30 am
It was hard to write–I knew what I wanted to convey, but the first tries didn’t get it done. Judy Tarr had graciously agreed to read the book in ms. (this was after I joined SFWA) and she tore me a new one over the way it was in that version…because to her it read conventionally as “prove the villain’s bad/ prove the hero’s brave” and if it was *only* that, she wanted it out completely. I knew it was more than that, but *writing* more than that meant getting into it more deeply, not less deeply. (The feathered mice and rats–Inca doves and white-winged doves–have arrived at the feeder–a moving carpet of dove-color.) Anyway.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — November 13, 2009 @ 11:26 am
The realism of the tough stuff is important. Speaking of the punishment scene involving Korryn and Jens (thanks for remembering it, Kyta; I was suppressing it), when I first read the scene it made me very uncomfortable (it’s supposed to) and yet I recognized how appropriate it was in the cultural context.
As recently as the Civil War, military discipline in our own country included some extreme measures not unlike those described, and I knew what military discipline could include in the ancient world, particularly in the Roman army. So in spite of the grimness I found the truth-telling profoundly satisfying both as a good piece of writing about human behavior and as a lesson in military history.
Comment by Eir de Scania — November 13, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
“I believe with Solzenitsyn that “the line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart.” That we do have choices, and that our choices matter.”
Absolutely. If bad things only were done by bad people everthing would be easier. Truth is, most bad things are done by decent people for various reasons, like “just doing my job” and “that’s how things are”. Or because they think it’s for The Greater Good.
Comment by elizabeth — November 14, 2009 @ 12:25 am
And severe physical punishment has been the norm a lot later than the 1860s in other militaries–and also for civilians.
I think there are bad people (and the damage they do to others isn’t mitigated by whatever excuse they had for being bad), but more often there are weak people–people who cannot hold to the good–and frightened people (not exactly the same as weak)–and angry people–and tired people–and distracted people. The bad behavior of basically decent people can result from being bullied into it, threatened into it, ordered to do it, or (for the “neglectful” types of bad behavior) simply not thinking, not noticing, not bothering to do some positive good thing.
And yet the consequences for others are just as bad. If someone lets himself/herself be misled into believing that Group X is Evil (when it’s not) and for that reason colludes in attacking Group X…Group X still suffers the attack. For legally competent adults, being lied to is no excuse for believing the lie.
Comment by Gerd — November 14, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
all this complexity – thats the real world we live in.
I’m glad that I live today and don’t have to make the choices my grandfather had to: losing just his job, losing his life or work for the Nazis.
Comment by elizabeth — November 15, 2009 @ 6:46 am
Hard times bring hard choices–and they come to most, sooner or later, though not always starkly with the muzzle of a gun.
Comment by Elizabeth D. — November 15, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
I love the books, and understand all the reasons for the torture, but yes, I do have some trouble with torture. My reality that I return to isn’t quite as cozy; I am also a former crime victim, and occasionally images do return. There is another aspect to the torture question, more than bad guys and brave hero, and even enduring soldier. There is also exploitation, and the danger of others being excited by it. I can’t decide whether or not this torture exploits, and I feel the characters do act and react in a human way to torture, and that the readers will “get it” that torture is bad (unlike many who watch people being hurt in movies and T.V. just for kicks). But there are still some questions: every kind of torture has its own difficulties.
I would imagine that she would have gone into shock at some point, at least from the psychological horror. It is the one point in the story that I didn’t feel that the result on the other side would have been so immediate, but I know that in history strange things have happened. But, she couldn’t marry the Duke because she was either sterile or else fully a renunciate of the world. Somehow, she comes through the ordeal, but she also has experienced something that she can’t discuss around a common campfire; she is a leader, but she is alone; welcome, but without a context for conversation. In some ways, the experience might alienate her as much as make her sympathetic. She might be impugned with bad deeds herself, by those whose minds associated her with the horror. At least she has come through for herself, but I imagine that she might even use another name when she travels to other lands.
Comment by elizabeth — November 15, 2009 @ 6:09 pm
You bring up an important point–that readers differ in their life experiences before they get to a story, and thus part of their reaction is the result of that prior conditioning.
There several kinds of scenes that are difficult–if not impossible–to write so that you can be sure no one gets off on them. Certainly I try–but I can’t anticipate every twisted mind’s quirks.
Speed of recovery: true miracle. That’s what really spooked the witnesses. I imagine those who saw the dead Lazarus walk out of the tomb, no longer dead and stinking, had the same kind of terror and awe.
Comment by Craig — November 16, 2009 @ 7:58 pm
When I read Paks 3 for the first time, reading the torture scene was painful. I cared too much about the character to skip over any of it. She was pushed far beyond any breaking point I would have imagined, and it made the prospect of being a paladin a very frigtening one. But the journey was worth it.
Comment by Elizabeth D. — November 18, 2009 @ 12:28 am
I’m not saying that the book should have been written differently. I love the books. In some ways, it is her healing in the beginning of Book III that is more difficult. The reality portrayed in the books seems very life-like, and that is also difficult, because the people are as petty as in real life, and under those circumstances, her healing is truly miraculous. One expects bad guys to be bad, but it is the presumptions of the good guys that made her an outcast.
Comment by elizabeth — November 18, 2009 @ 8:31 am
In my experience (and probably yours, too) it’s the blindness of the “good guys” to their own flaws–their pride in their uprightness, their virtues–that causes a lot of misery. Why, after all, do some people withhold aid from the poor, the unemployed, the sick? Because they themselves, having escaped whatever problem it is, take credit to themselves for that escape, and use that credit to blame those who fell under the harrow. In this country we hear from one contingent that it’s the fault of the poor that they’re poor–that they lost the job because they were lazy or incompetent, lost the house because they were spendthrifts, got sick because they didn’t exercise enough or eat right or take the right supplement. Their children fall behind in school and misbehave because the parents “don’t care”, not because they’re having to live in a car or under a bridge, and are terrified every moment of every day that they’ll be separated into different foster homes.
And those who make those judgments will tell you that they themselves are the good guys–prudent, hardworking, thrifty, religious, “decent” people.
Back to Solzhenitsyn–the line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart. Mine, too. The evil is not eliminated. It is always there, and which side of the heart grows larger–and which side any given word or act comes out of–is determined only by the willingness of the individual to admit that there is an evil side, that he or she is capable of evil and must resist it–must look those judgments square in the face and find the root of them. It is a very hard task indeed, and one at which I have failed too often in real life, though I can at least write about the consequences of not looking or looking.
Comment by arthur piantadosi — December 3, 2009 @ 12:58 am
I have been meaning to ask you, Elizabeth, about what you think about ebooks of your books. Also, you don’t seem to have any audiobooks of either Deed of Paksenarrion or Legacy of Gird. Why is that? Is it because Baen has the rights to them, or some other reason?
Comment by elizabeth — December 3, 2009 @ 6:49 am
If you mean ebooks issued by my publishers, I’m for ‘em. If you mean “ebooks” as pirated editions, I’m against ‘em.
Audiobooks of Paksenarrion are in the works now. Whether they go on to do Gird will depend on sales. Why did it take so long? Well, audiobook publishers weren’t that interested earlier.