Murder and Killing in Fiction

[Archon]

That is fine, and I have been told that I am argumentative as well, along with being told that I dont know when to quit. So I know how it is to really get into an argument like that. Just to clarify, my last statement about intelligent conversation was not directed toward anyone from the board.

[EUOL]

HoM, I thought your response was very well-stated.  I'd like to take this a different direction, and just talk about my own feelings on the subject.

I'm glad someone resurrected this thread.  I always meant to post on it, but never got around to it.

Sigyn asks a very important and personal question.  I do believe that authors have a moral responsibility to their readers.  I believe that it is their job to present Truth, in a way.  Not to preach truth, but to have their stories and characters live in a truthful world.  

I worry about presenting violence as an answer to problems.  I don't believe in violence, but I really like action.  This is a conflict for me, especially in MISTBORN, where the characters live in a very brutal world, and I have a very action-oriented magic system.

There is no justification for killing, there are only consequences.  In some cases, the consequences for killing are less than the consequences for not killing.  This is the 'resist evil' explanation.  However, there should still be consequences on your characters if they kill in the name of good.  I think it is the author's duty to represent these consequences accurately.  

I don't have answers.  I have thought about this, however.

[stacer]

I agree with EUOL, both on the idea that fiction should be presenting truth and about killing. I've been meaning to post here, as well. And I don't have time to post more, sorry.

[Archon]

 As an example the Germans who killed GIs in combat in WWII are not accused of or portrayed as having committed cold-blooded murder, despite our having been the winners there and therefore having written the history books.

Then again, The Germans were actually sometimes respected as opponents. Hated, but respected. Marshall is quoted as having said "natural fighters... discipline unbending." So it seems that the Germans were well respected as worthy adversaries.

EUOL, don't take this as anything more than curiosity, but why do you feel a responsibility to your readers? It is their choice about what they want to read, so if they dont like it then they dont read it. If I were writing I think I would just make the story so that I was satisfied with it, and then let the public decide what they think of it. If you believe that you have written a good piece then I think that that matters more than how it might affect some readers.

[Sigyn]

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I'm still not sure. Let's face it, Fantasy and Science Fiction tend to have a lot of action which usually ends up in killing. Most of the time as a reader, I want to see the bad guy killed off. However, I hate books that make me want to enter the book and kill the bad guy myself. I admit, I don't like feeling homicidal. I also have a terribly hard time killing off characters in my writing, even when I guess it would be "justified."

Lois McMaster Bujold dealt very well with it in "Curse of Chalion." The main character, in order to protect a number of innocent people, wants to kill off the bad guy. To do so, he has to perform death magic which will kill him (the main character) in the process.  He decides it is worth it, performs the magic, but is saved by a miracle. There is no law against successfully completing death magic (only attempting it), since no one has ever lived through it before. The character seems justified in his murder since he was willing to give his own life up for it and there was no other way to stop the bad guy (at least, no available way as the world was set up by the author).

There is a difference between the real world and fiction, but fiction should reflect the real world, in my opinion, or it is pointless. It's interesting how Disney gets around this problem: the good guy rarely kills the bad guy outright.  Instead, some force of nature or the bad guy's own mistake kills him. This avoids the dilemma but often seems unrealistic.  Wow, I need to stop talking now.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I can hardly speak for EUOL, but for myself, I feel responsible for what I present. What I present reflects on ME. Art is more than something that happens once. It influences people even if only in minute ways. I believe we are accountable for how we try to influence and the influence we put out. I don't want to be responsible for making people's lives worse, only better.

[Archon]

I can hardly speak for EUOL, but for myself, I feel responsible for what I present. What I present reflects on ME. Art is more than something that happens once. It influences people even if only in minute ways. I believe we are accountable for how we try to influence and the influence we put out. I don't want to be responsible for making people's lives worse, only better.

I agree that what you present reflects on you. Therefore, shouldnt you write to your own satisfaction? It might be just me but whenever I have something that I am proud of, I am not afraid to vouch for it, and I dont have a problem for answering for it. However, in writing fantasy, I dont think that the purpose of it is commonly to influence people, so much as to express oneself. You could argue that they are the same thing, but I dont think so, when you are expressing yourself you are not trying to get people to change, you just want to share ideas. Some books have a clear cut persuasive message, but again, if you feel that you have a valid point to make, then there shouldnt be a problem. You arent forcing people to read it, and ifthey disagree with it, that is their choice. On the other hand, many people might agree with you, and those are the ones that you affect most.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Lois McMaster Bujold dealt very well with it in "Curse of Chalion." The main character, in order to protect a number of innocent people, wants to kill off the bad guy. To do so, he has to perform death magic which will kill him (the main character) in the process.  He decides it is worth it, performs the magic, but is saved by a miracle.

Thus creating THE most emotionally intense scene I have ever read, and a major reason I love this book.

Everyone go read it now!

[stacer]

I'd have to say that pretty much anything you can read is written with a point of view, if not an agenda. Fiction, nonfiction, whatever--it all comes from someone's perspective. So the author is going to have some sort of influence one way or another, whether you're talking about the latest political piece or a really great fantasy book. Fiction has themes and messages that do have influence for good or ill, which is why writers have responsibility to write with integrity, and why readers have a responsibility to read with discernment.

I've learned so much about being a thoughtful reader since I've been in my program, and that affects pretty much anything I read now--but it isn't just the reader's responsibility. Each book is a collaboration between writer and reader, in a way--the writer writes it, of course, but the reader interprets it. I wouldn't say there are as many responses as readers, the way reader response theorists might, but I do think that there are multiple possible responses to each book, and the writer has control over a certain general direction in which those responses are going to go.

[Archon]

I agree, Stacer, that readers can gain something from any book. I dont, however think that it is necessarily something that the writer intended people to take away from the book. People are always going to interpret things, but I dont think that the author can be held responsible unless it was a clear message that the author was trying to make. After all, books are open to interpretation, and the manner in which one person interprets something might be completely different than the next persons. That makes the reader the one responsible and not the author, since it wasnt the authors intention.

[stacer]

Actually, that isn't what I said.

What I said was that an author can direct his or her book in a certain direction so that *hopefully* a certain degree of reactions can be expected.

Of course, then there's the topic of one of EUOL's panels from WorldCon--what responsibility does the author have if he writes something in the book that some teenager then decides to go recreate, even though the message of the book was obviously *not* that people should do it? (I forget what the specific topic was, something about vampires.)

In that case, I'd say, of course the author isn't responsible. But the author *does* still have the responsibility to handle the topic in the book with integrity.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

the example involved a 15 year old living out the fantasy of being a serial killer vampire. kinda extreme, but it got the point across.

no, Archon, you can't control the reactions. But you can control the scope of possible reasonable reactions by what you include. Yes, you should write to create something that pleases you, but it's completely irresponsible not to consider predictable response in the reader. To me, that shows a lack of understanding of your own work, and it cheapens what you've done, made it less significant. In the end, my work cannot satisfy even ME if I don't make something that I think will, on the whole, improve the world.

In short, the writer is NOT free of responsibility. And just because other people have free will is no justification for the removal of that responsibility.