Is stupid moral oversimplification necessary in a mass-market bestseller? E.g., Tolkien, Narnia, Star Wars.
Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked and other books, achieved considerable success turning the morally simplistic world of Oz into something more complex. The Broadway musical was also very popular as such things go. Not quite on the same level of success as your examples, but it shows there’s some market for it. (Maguire also wrote similar retellings of Snow White and Cinderella, which I think sold pretty well, although not as well as Wicked.)
Edited to add: Although if you’re only asking about “war stories” strictly defined, it may not be a good example.
Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked and other books, achieved considerable success turning the morally simplistic world of Oz into something more complex.
If the Wizard of Oz had been written that way to start with, could it have achieved its popularity? The fact that so many people know about Oz definitely helps anybody who wants to sell a deconstruction of it.
Good point. Wicked also is an imperfect example because it was written for adults, unlike the examples in the grandparent.
I wonder if there’s something different about the way (most) authors write books for children and (some) authors write books for adults—HP, Narnia, Star Wars, and Oz all had young audiences in mind. Most of the more morally complex movies mentioned in the grandparent were for adults. Do any of Stephen King’s bestsellers have moral complexity?
I also wonder if those writing and creating works for children (if they do gravitate towards moral simplicity) have the correct understanding of what their audience wants? Of course, HP and Star Wars certainly broke out well beyond children, so maybe a lot of adults want moral simplicity too.
Speaking of media for children, I once read that the MPAA will not certify a film as “G” if it contains if it contains morally ambiguous characters, regardless of the sex, violence, language or drugs. Unfortunately I cannot find an internet citation for this (beyond the talk of “mature themes”).
I read an essay by Stephen King where he claimed that his writing was basically socially conservative and morally simplistic—there’s always evil in his worlds, but it’s always an invader from the outside that must be repelled.
I read an essay by Stephen King where he claimed that his writing was basically socially conservative and morally simplistic—there’s always evil in his worlds, but it’s always an invader from the outside that must be repelled.
That seems like a major oversimplification. A whole bunch of exceptions spring immediately to mind, such as pretty much all the Bachman Books (where the villain is often society itself or the masses thereof), and short stories like Dolan’s Cadillac (where it’s not really clear who’s the bigger villain). And what about Firestarter?
Even in books like The Stand or Needful Things, where the evil really is a non-human invader from the outside, it gets big chunks of its power from individuals’ failings of character.
The “Save the Cat” series of books on screenwriting says that’s an essential part of such movies—that the monster only gets to invade because someone’s moral failing lets it in.
I’m not fond of their attitude—that there are only about a dozen possible plots for movies—but there certainly are a lot of movies that conform to them.
I have to disagree. The ‘morally grey’ approach can be interesting if the author is writing a story of ideas – exploring unconventional morality, novel social forms, etc – but very few authors have the ability to do that. Usually they’re writing a simple plot-driven story of romance and tribal conflict, which requires obstacles (for the romance) and enemies (for the tribal conflict). In this type of story trying to introduce sympathy for the villains just ruins the reader’s enjoyment to no purpose.
Besides which, morally grey stories have been in fashion for the last twenty years, and anyone who considers themselves a serious author has already taken at least one shot at it. Most genres are inundated with the stuff, some to the point where it’s hard to find anything else. The last thing we need is even more of it.
The ‘morally grey’ approach can be interesting if the author is writing a story of ideas [...]. Usually they’re writing a simple plot-driven story [...]. In this type of story trying to introduce sympathy for the villains just ruins the reader’s enjoyment to no purpose.
This is probably just a matter of taste, but I get enough simplified morality from people who believe that it applies in real life; I don’t want it any more in stories, even simple plot-driven ones.
[...] morally grey stories [...] Most genres are inundated with the stuff, some to the point where it’s hard to find anything else.
Not children’s literature. The children of today are the closed-minded partisans of tomorrow.
How would people characterize A Wrinkle in Time? It’s been ages since I’ve read it, but it’s another indisputably (?) classic children’s book. IT and a lot of the good/evil shadow imagery seem somewhat morally simplistic in my memory, but I seem to recall other moral complexity, e.g., with the Mrs. Ws.
I’m also having trouble characterizing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in terms of moral complexity, but it also doesn’t fit in with the other examples in that it lacks a high-stakes struggle. Alice in Wonderland is the other major children’s classic fantasy I can think of, but I can’t recall what, if any, type of morality it presented.
Good question. As I recall, I found the first half much more interesting than the last half. In retrospect, I think that one reason was that the Ws required thought to understand but It did not. (But I don’t recall thinking this at the time, so take that with a grain of salt.)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory […] Alice in Wonderland
The morality in these is farcical, so it’s easier to be grey, or just meaningless. (In Tim Burton’s recent adaptation of Alice, which has a coherent plot unlike the original, the morality was very black and white.)
Now I remember the famous debate in The Horn Book Magazine about the morality in Charlie. I found most of that debate pointless becauseCharlie’s morality is farcical, so why would you expect it to make sense? (Well, the debate wasn’t only about morality.)
And that reminds me of Ursula Le Guin (who took the anti-Charlie position in the first April 1973 Letter to the Editor at the above link); she wrote the children’s fantasy trilogy Earthsea. This has a fairly grey morality, especially the middle book, which is told from the perspective of an antagonist (at first) of the trilogy’s main protagonist. Years later, Le Guin wrote a sequel trilogy, which (while earning a mixed reaction from the fans) addressed some of the problems that she saw in the original trilogy; it was even greyer, but it was not marketed to children anymore. In any case, Earthsea is not a counterexample to ewbrownv’s claims, because the story does explore ‘unconventional morality, novel social forms, etc’ (and does it well, IMO).
Ob MoR: Earthsea has an anti-lifeist moral, but because it is grey, it treats the lifeist position with some respect; the villains are more misguided than evil, and you can sympathise with them. Lifeists still won’t be happy with it, especially in the sequels, where gur urebrf qrfgebl gur nsgreyvsr (although once you get to that point, this is pretty well justified). But at least the lifeist position is not dismissed out of hand.
Are you asking for children’s literature, or YA? There are quite a few YA, morally grey, literature available; not incredibly popular, but existing. I would argue that it’s difficult to really develop grey morality in a ‘child″s worldview, since what a child is is more difficult to define. That said, I would say The Demon’s Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan, is quite morally in the grey area; the protagonists are really not very ‘good’, nor are they very ‘evil’ as in the case of an anti-hero.
...I believe that it would also be wise to introduce grey morality age-appropriately—because if someone is young enough, they might go off humanizing the villains, and humanizing a villain that would predate on someone that young would not be wise.
The younger the better, I suppose. Although library and bookseller classifications have to draw the line somewhere, there’s really a continuum of target audience ages. Anything that is widely read by children should count, regardless of how it’s classified (although how it’s classified may give a reasonable estimate of whether children read it, in the absence of real data).
Eliezer has referred to HP as ‘for children’ when explaining some of the changes that MoR (which is not for children) has to the background universe. But HP is often classified as YA. I would not want to be picky.
humanizing a villain that would predate on someone that young would not be wise.
That’s an interesting argument. I definitely believe that children must learn that villains are humans too by the time they are old enough to commit acts of revenge that can cause significant harm. So certainly tweens (who will soon be old enough to join gangs, plan for future careers, etc) should read about humanized villains, while still reading about heroes who resist them. But very young children may need to classify people strictly into good and evil to successfully avoid harmful people. That’s an uncomfortable idea to me, but I don’t know enough about child psychology to rationally evaluate it.
Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked and other books, achieved considerable success turning the morally simplistic world of Oz into something more complex. The Broadway musical was also very popular as such things go. Not quite on the same level of success as your examples, but it shows there’s some market for it. (Maguire also wrote similar retellings of Snow White and Cinderella, which I think sold pretty well, although not as well as Wicked.)
Edited to add: Although if you’re only asking about “war stories” strictly defined, it may not be a good example.
If the Wizard of Oz had been written that way to start with, could it have achieved its popularity? The fact that so many people know about Oz definitely helps anybody who wants to sell a deconstruction of it.
Good point. Wicked also is an imperfect example because it was written for adults, unlike the examples in the grandparent.
I wonder if there’s something different about the way (most) authors write books for children and (some) authors write books for adults—HP, Narnia, Star Wars, and Oz all had young audiences in mind. Most of the more morally complex movies mentioned in the grandparent were for adults. Do any of Stephen King’s bestsellers have moral complexity?
I also wonder if those writing and creating works for children (if they do gravitate towards moral simplicity) have the correct understanding of what their audience wants? Of course, HP and Star Wars certainly broke out well beyond children, so maybe a lot of adults want moral simplicity too.
Speaking of media for children, I once read that the MPAA will not certify a film as “G” if it contains if it contains morally ambiguous characters, regardless of the sex, violence, language or drugs. Unfortunately I cannot find an internet citation for this (beyond the talk of “mature themes”).
I read an essay by Stephen King where he claimed that his writing was basically socially conservative and morally simplistic—there’s always evil in his worlds, but it’s always an invader from the outside that must be repelled.
That seems like a major oversimplification. A whole bunch of exceptions spring immediately to mind, such as pretty much all the Bachman Books (where the villain is often society itself or the masses thereof), and short stories like Dolan’s Cadillac (where it’s not really clear who’s the bigger villain). And what about Firestarter?
Even in books like The Stand or Needful Things, where the evil really is a non-human invader from the outside, it gets big chunks of its power from individuals’ failings of character.
The “Save the Cat” series of books on screenwriting says that’s an essential part of such movies—that the monster only gets to invade because someone’s moral failing lets it in.
I’m not fond of their attitude—that there are only about a dozen possible plots for movies—but there certainly are a lot of movies that conform to them.
But McGuire’s works work because they are deconstructions; he is a fanfic writer, albeit working in the mainstream business model.
What the world needs are financially successful original stories, and indeed children’s stories, with grey morality.
Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, leans grey. The villain is unambiguously The Bad Guy, but the protagonist is decidedly unsaintly, as is his mentor.
So that’s one.
Thanks; I like Gaiman but didn’t know about that, so now I can read it!
I have to disagree. The ‘morally grey’ approach can be interesting if the author is writing a story of ideas – exploring unconventional morality, novel social forms, etc – but very few authors have the ability to do that. Usually they’re writing a simple plot-driven story of romance and tribal conflict, which requires obstacles (for the romance) and enemies (for the tribal conflict). In this type of story trying to introduce sympathy for the villains just ruins the reader’s enjoyment to no purpose.
Besides which, morally grey stories have been in fashion for the last twenty years, and anyone who considers themselves a serious author has already taken at least one shot at it. Most genres are inundated with the stuff, some to the point where it’s hard to find anything else. The last thing we need is even more of it.
This is probably just a matter of taste, but I get enough simplified morality from people who believe that it applies in real life; I don’t want it any more in stories, even simple plot-driven ones.
Not children’s literature. The children of today are the closed-minded partisans of tomorrow.
How would people characterize A Wrinkle in Time? It’s been ages since I’ve read it, but it’s another indisputably (?) classic children’s book. IT and a lot of the good/evil shadow imagery seem somewhat morally simplistic in my memory, but I seem to recall other moral complexity, e.g., with the Mrs. Ws.
I’m also having trouble characterizing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in terms of moral complexity, but it also doesn’t fit in with the other examples in that it lacks a high-stakes struggle. Alice in Wonderland is the other major children’s classic fantasy I can think of, but I can’t recall what, if any, type of morality it presented.
Good question. As I recall, I found the first half much more interesting than the last half. In retrospect, I think that one reason was that the Ws required thought to understand but It did not. (But I don’t recall thinking this at the time, so take that with a grain of salt.)
The morality in these is farcical, so it’s easier to be grey, or just meaningless. (In Tim Burton’s recent adaptation of Alice, which has a coherent plot unlike the original, the morality was very black and white.)
Now I remember the famous debate in The Horn Book Magazine about the morality in Charlie. I found most of that debate pointless because Charlie’s morality is farcical, so why would you expect it to make sense? (Well, the debate wasn’t only about morality.)
And that reminds me of Ursula Le Guin (who took the anti-Charlie position in the first April 1973 Letter to the Editor at the above link); she wrote the children’s fantasy trilogy Earthsea. This has a fairly grey morality, especially the middle book, which is told from the perspective of an antagonist (at first) of the trilogy’s main protagonist. Years later, Le Guin wrote a sequel trilogy, which (while earning a mixed reaction from the fans) addressed some of the problems that she saw in the original trilogy; it was even greyer, but it was not marketed to children anymore. In any case, Earthsea is not a counterexample to ewbrownv’s claims, because the story does explore ‘unconventional morality, novel social forms, etc’ (and does it well, IMO).
Ob MoR: Earthsea has an anti-lifeist moral, but because it is grey, it treats the lifeist position with some respect; the villains are more misguided than evil, and you can sympathise with them. Lifeists still won’t be happy with it, especially in the sequels, where gur urebrf qrfgebl gur nsgreyvsr (although once you get to that point, this is pretty well justified). But at least the lifeist position is not dismissed out of hand.
Are you asking for children’s literature, or YA? There are quite a few YA, morally grey, literature available; not incredibly popular, but existing. I would argue that it’s difficult to really develop grey morality in a ‘child″s worldview, since what a child is is more difficult to define. That said, I would say The Demon’s Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan, is quite morally in the grey area; the protagonists are really not very ‘good’, nor are they very ‘evil’ as in the case of an anti-hero.
...I believe that it would also be wise to introduce grey morality age-appropriately—because if someone is young enough, they might go off humanizing the villains, and humanizing a villain that would predate on someone that young would not be wise.
The younger the better, I suppose. Although library and bookseller classifications have to draw the line somewhere, there’s really a continuum of target audience ages. Anything that is widely read by children should count, regardless of how it’s classified (although how it’s classified may give a reasonable estimate of whether children read it, in the absence of real data).
Eliezer has referred to HP as ‘for children’ when explaining some of the changes that MoR (which is not for children) has to the background universe. But HP is often classified as YA. I would not want to be picky.
That’s an interesting argument. I definitely believe that children must learn that villains are humans too by the time they are old enough to commit acts of revenge that can cause significant harm. So certainly tweens (who will soon be old enough to join gangs, plan for future careers, etc) should read about humanized villains, while still reading about heroes who resist them. But very young children may need to classify people strictly into good and evil to successfully avoid harmful people. That’s an uncomfortable idea to me, but I don’t know enough about child psychology to rationally evaluate it.
Any sufficiently high-stakes conflict presented with moral overtones should do.
That reminds me that I really, really liked John Gardner’s Grendel (Beowulf from Grendel’s view). But it wasn’t very commercially successful.