The Nature Of Evil
In the last month or so, I've had the wonderful opportunity to read several books examining the nature of evil: Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, Tad Williams's The War of the Flowers, and K J Parker's Devices and Desires. Broadly all four can be classified as fantasy, or fantastic literature.
But what makes them better vehicles for discussion of that age-old topic than, say, the daily newspapers, the weekly newsmagazines, or CNN? I would have to say that fantasy novels are better because they can choose not to make accommodation for the essence of evil. In the news, in whatever medium, and even in our classrooms, we generally shy away from the idea of evil. We do not seek to understand its causes, its boundaries, its emanations and structures. We do not often ask, "Why is this evil?" or "Why is he evil?" or even, "What is evil?"
In Kostova's Historian, the amorality of the Wallachian count (you ought to know which one I mean) - by all neutral accounts, a viciously Machiavellian but supremely intellectual ruler - is examined as it were by indirect lighting. We hardly see him, but we receive historical evidence and human perspectives. We realise that being an historian can be an evil thing if one aims for perfect neutrality. Amorality then, is also evil. Objectivity in the face of the human condition, also evil. Powerful stuff. There are many who would disagree about objectivity being evil - by definition, it is an attempt to remain outside non-rational perspectives. It ignores, however, the fact that reason can never be the core of existence in a world which can be apprehended but not fully comprehended (vide Gödel).
Gaiman's Anansi Boys is at first an oddly off-centre and slightly comedic journey from somewhere behind the left shoulder of the protagonist. It is somewhat related to Ted Hughes' stories of the mythical Early World, and the rest of the rich folklore of Creation. It is also very much like a Tom Holt look at reality, and 100% Gaiman. Is creativity evil? If you could make a duplicate of someone else, would you infringe on copyright? These questions seem rather quirky, but they are questions that tease you and lead you to define evil much more clearly. Is evil relativist - Nature red in tooth and claw vs Human grey swelling the vox urbana - and perhaps not evil at all in its proper context? Is destruction evil? Look at the tiger and the shrike, read Gaiman, and come to your own conclusions.
Williams's book is a slight contrast to the first two in that is an almost purely Faerie kind of tale (which, like a New York state of mind, is hard to define but easily spotted). The protagonist is dislikeable, a bit of a twat. He whines and whinges through the first part, as the evil congeals around him and his alter ego attempts to summon Old Night into the world. He has to deal with a political environment not unlike that of Belfast in the last century (somewhere in the book, a character says that the Irish learnt their ways from the faerie). The nature of evil here is mainly one of taking pleasure in dominance, in the act of control and the inflicting of torment. But there is a very nasty subtext on evil as well: evil is not reasonable (unlike the amoral and trenchant reasoning of the vampire) and it is sickeningly unnatural.
Parker, of course, has made a career of showing that evil proceeds incrementally and rationally from two things: the nature of humanity and the logic of human reason. Devices is the first book in a third trilogy by this excellent author. Probably the best way to summarise the intellectual and moral difficulties of Parker's characters is to quote Iain Banks who in Inversions writes: "We never like to think of ourselves as being wrong... We never like to think we are sinning, merely that we are making hard decisions..." In every one of Parker's books (see also the Fencer and Scavenger trilogies), perfectly reasonable characters are faced with evil and come to the reasonable conclusion that their only response is to act appropriately - that is, with what we would consider evil and what they are forced to believe is rational.
Four books. Four perspectives on evil: neutral is evil, nature is evil, evil is unreasonable and unnatural, evil is the rational response to an evil world. The terrible about evil is that all four perspectives contain truth. Evil is the consequence of living in a world which is home to terror, faithlessness, artifice and self-gratification. It is so close to us that we find it natural and, at the present time, seldom worthy of discussion.
Evil is now so much part of real life that we must turn to the literature of the fantastic in order to understand two simple things: it is REAL, and it is BAD FOR US.
But what makes them better vehicles for discussion of that age-old topic than, say, the daily newspapers, the weekly newsmagazines, or CNN? I would have to say that fantasy novels are better because they can choose not to make accommodation for the essence of evil. In the news, in whatever medium, and even in our classrooms, we generally shy away from the idea of evil. We do not seek to understand its causes, its boundaries, its emanations and structures. We do not often ask, "Why is this evil?" or "Why is he evil?" or even, "What is evil?"
In Kostova's Historian, the amorality of the Wallachian count (you ought to know which one I mean) - by all neutral accounts, a viciously Machiavellian but supremely intellectual ruler - is examined as it were by indirect lighting. We hardly see him, but we receive historical evidence and human perspectives. We realise that being an historian can be an evil thing if one aims for perfect neutrality. Amorality then, is also evil. Objectivity in the face of the human condition, also evil. Powerful stuff. There are many who would disagree about objectivity being evil - by definition, it is an attempt to remain outside non-rational perspectives. It ignores, however, the fact that reason can never be the core of existence in a world which can be apprehended but not fully comprehended (vide Gödel).
Gaiman's Anansi Boys is at first an oddly off-centre and slightly comedic journey from somewhere behind the left shoulder of the protagonist. It is somewhat related to Ted Hughes' stories of the mythical Early World, and the rest of the rich folklore of Creation. It is also very much like a Tom Holt look at reality, and 100% Gaiman. Is creativity evil? If you could make a duplicate of someone else, would you infringe on copyright? These questions seem rather quirky, but they are questions that tease you and lead you to define evil much more clearly. Is evil relativist - Nature red in tooth and claw vs Human grey swelling the vox urbana - and perhaps not evil at all in its proper context? Is destruction evil? Look at the tiger and the shrike, read Gaiman, and come to your own conclusions.
Williams's book is a slight contrast to the first two in that is an almost purely Faerie kind of tale (which, like a New York state of mind, is hard to define but easily spotted). The protagonist is dislikeable, a bit of a twat. He whines and whinges through the first part, as the evil congeals around him and his alter ego attempts to summon Old Night into the world. He has to deal with a political environment not unlike that of Belfast in the last century (somewhere in the book, a character says that the Irish learnt their ways from the faerie). The nature of evil here is mainly one of taking pleasure in dominance, in the act of control and the inflicting of torment. But there is a very nasty subtext on evil as well: evil is not reasonable (unlike the amoral and trenchant reasoning of the vampire) and it is sickeningly unnatural.
Parker, of course, has made a career of showing that evil proceeds incrementally and rationally from two things: the nature of humanity and the logic of human reason. Devices is the first book in a third trilogy by this excellent author. Probably the best way to summarise the intellectual and moral difficulties of Parker's characters is to quote Iain Banks who in Inversions writes: "We never like to think of ourselves as being wrong... We never like to think we are sinning, merely that we are making hard decisions..." In every one of Parker's books (see also the Fencer and Scavenger trilogies), perfectly reasonable characters are faced with evil and come to the reasonable conclusion that their only response is to act appropriately - that is, with what we would consider evil and what they are forced to believe is rational.
Four books. Four perspectives on evil: neutral is evil, nature is evil, evil is unreasonable and unnatural, evil is the rational response to an evil world. The terrible about evil is that all four perspectives contain truth. Evil is the consequence of living in a world which is home to terror, faithlessness, artifice and self-gratification. It is so close to us that we find it natural and, at the present time, seldom worthy of discussion.
Evil is now so much part of real life that we must turn to the literature of the fantastic in order to understand two simple things: it is REAL, and it is BAD FOR US.
etched with acid at 5:59:00 pm
1 Comments:
Hmm, I would like to get my hands on Parker's book. Kostova is rather good. Surprisingly.
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