{"id":1807,"date":"2013-04-01T18:23:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T00:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1807"},"modified":"2013-04-01T18:23:52","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T00:23:52","slug":"moral-complexity-v-moral-ambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1807","title":{"rendered":"Moral Complexity v. Moral Ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A listserv I’m on mentioned that a member had published a review of Game of Thrones<\/em> in a major market,\u00a0 so I wandered over to look.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s the link: http:\/\/lareviewofbooks.org\/article.php?type=&id=1543&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint<\/a><\/p>\n

I was impressed with the review on several counts, but the one I want to bring up here is the way other reviewers, critics, and readers talk about characterization, especially in the area of morality\/ethics and spirituality.\u00a0 This isn’t about GRRM’s books, per se<\/em>, but about a way of looking at all books, and considering how a writer’s view of reality affects how that writer constructs characters.\u00a0\u00a0 Right now–in the review cited and in other writing about Game of Thrones<\/em>–Martin epitomizes one particular view of reality, history, and human nature.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tolkein is often cited as his opposite. Thus it’s important to use language appropriate to those fundamental views–which Teitelbaum does in her review,\u00a0 and many others do not.<\/p>\n

I’m going a bit further: she deals with the\u00a0 books, as a reviewer should, but I’m dealing with the field of “book discussion” in general.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Complex characterization–including moral complexity–is usually considered a desirable component of serious fiction and has been throughout literary history in the West (I’m not competent to speak of other branches of the tree of literature, though the folktales I’ve read suggest appreciation of complex characterization worldwide in more sophisticated readerships.) \u00a0 Characters faced with difficult choices–characters whose choices arose from internal conflicts as well as external challenges, from Aristotle’s “fatal flaw” to subtler multiple ones–characters who had to cope with the results of their choices (good and bad)–were praised for that complexity.<\/p>\n

But over the past century, increasingly, moral ambiguity become conflated with moral complexity…as if a character’s feeling of ambiguity in some situations–being uncertain what was the right choice, or feeling tempted to a wrong one–made the character morally ambiguous.\u00a0\u00a0 From there,\u00a0 “morally ambiguous” expanded to mean that readers could not discern whether the character was “good” or “bad” or whether the character had any conception of right and wrong…and from there, fairly predictably,\u00a0 the morally ambiguous character became the one who ignored any such considerations and simply acted on personal preference.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Characters who would once have been recognized as evil were retitled morally ambiguous and granted the description of moral complexity as well.<\/p>\n

Writers whose characters had a clear understanding of right and wrong within the fictional culture (the character’s culture)\u00a0 were criticized for writing characters without moral complexity–simplistic, idealistic, romantic being some of the common terms applied.\u00a0\u00a0 Hence the shallow criticism of Tolkein that his characters were simply good or simply bad, without the desired complexity.\u00a0 (How any thinking adult reading Tolkein with attention could miss the moral complexity baffles me, but then I’m easily baffled.)<\/p>\n

We all act, in part, from beliefs about the nature of the moral universe–beliefs, because there isn’t enough data for us to use logic every time we come to a choice.\u00a0 Either we think there’s a general good and bad, right and wrong…or we think there isn’t.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In both camps there are disagreements on detail–serious ones–but the chasm between the two is larger than the internal fissures.<\/p>\n

Moral complexity requires a general good and bad–an ordered moral universe.\u00a0\u00a0 For there to be conflicts of values, the essence of moral complexity, there must be values held firmly enough to spark off one another.\u00a0 Character motivations will then include internal conflicts arising from the recognition that choices are made in that framework–but are not simple, because values do conflict.\u00a0\u00a0 Which good is the greater good?\u00a0\u00a0 Which bad is worse in this situation, right now?<\/p>\n

Moral ambiguity requires that there be no general good and bad–a chaotic, or amoral, universe–a universe in which the concepts of good and evil are absent, immaterial, and have no effect on characters’\u00a0 motivation.\u00a0\u00a0 Characters can still be complex, but they cannot be complex in the moral dimension.\u00a0 They have preferences, desires, fears, which motivate actions, but they do not relate these to any moral order.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Moral order, if any,\u00a0 is supplied by the reader (and some readers, happy in an amoral view of things, have none to supply.)<\/p>\n

Thus moral complexity and moral ambiguity are not the same,\u00a0 and do not exist in the same fictional moral universes…except where a writer introduces characters who themselves believe these two different viewpoints.\u00a0\u00a0 What happens then is interesting…because writers reveal themselves in their writing. \u00a0\u00a0 When those two views appear in the same story, the writer will inevitably (in all my years of reading experience) reveal what the writer’s own foundation belief is, and most of the wrinkles of the subsidiary choices as well.<\/p>\n

One of the scariest things about writing is that the better you get at writing fiction, the more you’re revealing yourself…the less you can hide.\u00a0 The novice storyteller’s self is hidden in layers of “influence”–what shows is what he or she read most–but later on, that fabled “voice” comes through and there you are, revealed, warts and pimples and flab and all.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s not that all your characters are “you”, or that you did everything your characters did or approved of it.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s that\u00a0 foundational beliefs that you may not even mention–probably don’t mention–bleed through.\u00a0 They are what I call the “deep logic” of your stories.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Two writers may write a similar story–may write a hero and an anti-hero–but under that will be their deep beliefs about what “hero” and “anti-hero” mean, and the discerning reader will know that one of them thinks good & evil, right & wrong, just & unjust are real concepts, an important component of human thought and action,\u00a0 and the other thinks those are just romantic twaddle and what matters is strength, will, desire, etc.<\/p>\n

So I toss out these ideas: moral complexity is not moral ambiguity, and moral ambiguity is not moral complexity.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Labeling moral ambiguity “realistic” and moral complexity “idealistic” or “romantic” is…in a world in which fervent believers in one or another branch of morality kill or\u00a0 die (or both) to spread it…an exercise in denial.\u00a0 \u00a0 I wish reviewers, critics, and those who comment on books had the background to recognize and distinguish between them.<\/p>\n

And now, back to the current chapter in which someone who “needed killing” had an unusual but fitting end.\u00a0\u00a0 Last night’s session went long into the wee hours of the morning, so my day has been off-kilter from that as well as daylight savings time.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Working on the chapter today…well.\u00a0 I write better before 1 am than after, but “what happened” still feels right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A listserv I’m on mentioned that a member had published a review of Game of Thrones in a major market,\u00a0 so I wandered over to look.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s the link: http:\/\/lareviewofbooks.org\/article.php?type=&id=1543&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint I was impressed with the review on several counts, but the one I want to bring up here is the way other reviewers, critics, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,53,5],"tags":[62,112],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1808,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions\/1808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}