Reading Bad: Some Reflections on Evil in Narrative

Abstract

Evil is an integral part of storytelling, serving both an aesthetic and a moral function; it gives pleasure to the reader, broadens the spectrum of narrative and provides a necessary foil and companion for goodness. Readers may disapprove of bad things in books but they also benefit from them, sometimes in perplexing ways. In the Gospels, no crucifixion would mean no salvation, no roistering by the Prodigal Son would mean no chance for his father to show prodigious love. In classical tragedy, Antigone must die so that we may understand the tension between individual morality and the needs of the state. In medieval literature, Dante must join the damned to understand God’s world. Watching the struggles and death of Prince Hamlet or King Lear deepens our knowledge of life, fate, values and choices. In the twentieth century, as traditional faith-based truth faced new challenges, stories developed a modern focus on the perennial questions of evil. But is the reader or viewer an innocent party in these processes? Should we be enjoying sacred or tragic disasters? Do we understand the interlocking dimensions of evil? In our own time, widely-known stories (including crime fiction, thrillers, adventure movies) often take evil deeds as a pretext and urge us to welcome extreme violence as a cathartic release. This happens in fiction but also in the swarms of manipulative tales that form the drone-clouds of political propaganda. The present reflections will also emphasize the awkward position of readers as our ethical systems encounter the moral world of stories.