Why My Villains Are More Like Real People

Good vs Evil is too melodramatic and unrealistic for me

 I recently read an article on Pocket, The Good Guy/Bad Guy Myth by Catherine Nichols, here: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-good-guy-bad-guy-myth?utm_source=pocket-newtab.

In this amazing article, Ms. Nichols discusses the fact that old myths and fairytales weren’t about fighting for “morality” or “values.” These stories presented characters as having personalities, not an inflexible set of moral beliefs. She states that many times folktales had a moral to the story, but there were also tales where the hero only succeeds because they break the rules.

Here’s an excerpt from the article, but I highly recommend the whole thing:

“The situation is more complex in epics such as The Iliad, which does have two ‘teams’, as well as characters who wrestle with moral meanings. But the teams don’t represent the clash of two sets of values in the same way that modern good guys and bad guys do. Neither Achilles nor Hector stands for values that the other side cannot abide, nor are they fighting to protect the world from the other team. They don’t symbolise anything but themselves and, though they talk about war often, they never cite their values as the reason to fight the good fight. The ostensibly moral face-off between good and evil is a recent invention that evolved in concert with modern nationalism – and, ultimately, it gives voice to a political vision not an ethical one.”

Stories are meant to teach us how to navigate this crazy thing we call life. I’ve been around long enough now to see that situations are always far more complex than we make them out to be. If someone does something “bad” in real life, they have a reason for it. We may not agree with that reason, but the person in question felt the reason was compelling enough to take action. They certainly don’t see themselves as evil.

Here’s another awesome excerpt:

“Stories about good guys and bad guys that are implicitly moral – in the sense that they invest an individual’s entire social identity in him not changing his mind about a moral issue – perversely end up discouraging any moral deliberation. Instead of anguishing over multidimensional characters in conflict – as we find in The Iliad, or the Mahabharata or Hamlet – such stories rigidly categorise people according to the values they symbolise, flattening all the deliberation and imagination of ethical action into a single thumbs up or thumbs down. Either a person is acceptable for Team Good, or he belongs to Team Evil.”

If I can portray antagonists in my stories who have compelling, even sympathetic, reasons for doing the things they do, no matter how ugly, only then do I feel I’ve done my job properly. If we really do learn how to navigate life through the stories with which we come into contact, then I feel compelled to show the opposition as being real people with real problems who have difficult choices to make, and who have the capacity to learn something, positive or negative, from the results of those choices.

And you know what? I have great empathy for my villains, even when they make bad choices. I’ve felt their pain and frustration. I can see they’re headed for ugly consequences, and I can even warn them about what future they’re creating for themselves. When I create characters who reflect the shortcomings and mistakes of people who cross my path (especially my own failings), then I gain a greater understanding of why people (especially me) do dumb stuff. If I can extend that empathy and understanding to real life and real people, for myself and others, then I’ve created fiction that has served a purposed.

What’s your take on good vs evil in fiction?