What makes a character evil and when is that evil redeemable?

[MajorKerina]

General thought process question for something I'm working on right now.

I've actually had a character who is an antagonist go from seeming like a total scoundrel to redemption in their backstory. While I'm tempted to take the same route again with another character, I have something different in mind. I was reflecting on the nature of good and evil.

I was fascinated by the reaction that can happen when a character doesn't do anything wrong, behaves kindly, is otherwise sympathetic but when readers learn their identity they suddenly turn on them and see all their actions in the new light even though nothing has changed but their preconceptions. How a character can divert from or feed into those preconceptions fascinates me.

Example show a little Austrian boy in the late 19 century who is strongly connected to his mother. Maybe make it not so obvious. Or even misdirect like how Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Tito, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Stalin all lived within a few miles of each other in Vienna in 1913.

It's fascinating how a reader might interpret even the most insignificant actions of a character they think is evil as a clear sign of their eventual evil doing or if they think a character is virtuous then every positive sign will be a note of that virtue.

One inspiration I had in mind for my writing was Ursula K Le Guin's "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas". And how the utopian society is built on a horrible, evil act and how that's basically an indictment of our society as well. Children live in that perfect society but one day have to learn the secret... it's somehow maintained by keeping a single child in horrible squalor, darkness and suffering forever.

Is it evil to maintain that society knowing the cost? Do you walk away? Alternatives I have heard is to kill the child and release them from suffering and screw the society, let it crumble. And take the place of the child as the one who endures as the scapegoat in suffering.

It's a complicated thought without any easy answers. But I was just wondering considering the nature of all those factors, what is good and what is evil. Are either absolute? How can they vary and how might a character transition to evil or to good credibly and what might be a point past redemption or past corruption?

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

Evil is based on the morality of the beholder or society. If Good is based on the betterment of society, then Evil is something that runs counter to that. Religious people will get Good and Evil from their doctrine, though. However, societally speaking, they change throughout the ages. Many things that used to be considered Evil are no longer, and some are normalized in modern society.

What makes a character evil? Usually, the line is clear if the behavior is obvious. For example, the character kills people for no reason or if they extort others. The hard part is when it isn't obvious or when society is evil.

I don't really have a solid answer for the redeemability of evil characters. With evil MCs, many authors attempt to justify their actions with their backstory. Some readers will say it is justified, and others won't. Many who read revenge stories where an MC turns evil believe their behavior was justified.

Sorry I didn't give a concrete answer. I don't know.

 

[NineHeadHeavenDevouringSerpent]

Good vs Evil in progression fantasies is easy

Hurt humans= Evil
Hunt beasts= Good

Men other than mc having ambitions= Evil!
Mc decimating a whole sect for revenge= Good!

.......

Ignoring that, good and evil is based on social norms, some understandable some lost their meaning over the ages.


If you had taken a poll when Hitler was in power, his people wouldn't even think about putting him and evil at the same time. Do you think Harry Truman should be called Evil ? He was afterall responsible for civilian genocide...

Humans inherently are without Good and Evil...They are Chaotic and are swayed by their incomplete comprehension of situations, it is always about "What they think is right". We are a lot more clueless and unaware then we let on.

 

[NotaNuffian]

To me, an evil character becomes irredeemable is when he hurts a child.

Which is kind of odd because in the far past when I read that Fang Yuan used a pair of twins as charcoal and repeatedly kick them back into the fire, I was iffy but ok. The work only made me lost it and dropped it permanently was when FY killed a "good guy", made worse when he knew that the "good guy" remained a good guy all the way into the future.

Why I said it is odd? Because now I am fully able to accept murdering innocents, raping, tortures and mutilations. Not hurting an innocent baby though. Oh wait, I am still very fine in hurting children.

Changing the first statement a bit; an evil character becomes irredeemable is when he hurts an innocent baby. Everything else is still fair game.

On second second thought, maybe babies are fair game too. After all, Griffith got fans all because he had a sad past and is handsome af.

So, evil is redeemable when it is pretty.

I am shallow.

 

[TotallyHuman]

Liberals, no

 

[NineHeadHeavenDevouringSerpent]

Liberals, no

Shots Fired! SHOTS Fired! I repeat Shots fired!

 

[Zirrboy]

Sorry I didn't give a concrete answer. I don't know.

Skill issue

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

Skill issue

The foot's on the other shoe, eh?

 

[Anon2024]

No one is irredeemable unless they choose to be.

 

[Zirrboy]

The foot's on the other shoe, eh?

Blame Sailus he didn't raise you well.

 

[PancakesWitch]

all evil is technically redeemable as long as the one being evil wants to geniunely and sincerely change, otherwise its not. if they were mass murders and rapist, they can redeem by killing themselves for example

 

[Novel_Fam]

It’s truly complicated, but I will give you a character that somehow fits yet not and I’m sure many know him.
Il-nam from Squid Game.

 

[LilRora]

I always get pissed off when I read a story that claims there exists something like objective good and objective evil. It's all subjective, and that makes it prone to change. Add to that the fact many things are good in some aspects and bad in other, add, on top of it, that humans have only limited knowledge about them, and it often becomes virtually impossible to tell if something is good and evil.

Just like your utopian example, it's not possible to say whether maintaining that utopia is good or evil. It's got its good part and its evil part. They can't balance each other out, because those are fundamentally different things - people can only judge it subjectively, based on the values that come about because of people's upbringing and personal experiences.

Any system that attempts to balance good and evil, such as karma, either relies on arbitrary assumptions (karma in most games or stories), or on our lack of knowledge about objective good and evil (such as the biblical good and evil, where God's the judge) - so it's either not objective at all, or we only assume it's objective but cannot confirm it or use it in any real situation with absolute certainty because in principle we don't know how exactly it works.

 

[GoodPerson]

Good & Evil is based on every individual's perspective. However, we do have one thing in common we agree.

If someone slaps a baby, moreover a cute one, they are called pure evil and are bound to the deepest hole in hell.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Sigh...

There are many axis of morality

Objective: Good-Evil
Subjective: Right-Wrong
Social: Legal-Illegal
Outcome: Positive-Negative

To boil it down to ONE AXIS is foolish and a waste of time.

Furthermore, every society is built on evil acts. In order for you to enjoy the peace and prosperity that you enjoy, evil acts were committed in your name. Those acts were "right" in the eyes of their enactors because the outcome was positive.

Objectively, there are acts that are almost universally evil and acts that are good. YES, everything is subjective. Guess what? You could be a brain in a jar. Reducto ad absurdum is pointless and has no bearing on a conversation about morality.

I think we can all agree a step father raping and murdering a 18 month old girl so the mother can film it and sell it on the internet for money to buy drugs is evil. If you are going to argue, that is not objectively evil, there is just something wrong with you.

And no, this is not a hypothetical. So if you are going to play, "Morality is just chemicals in your brain" bullshit, all you are doing is bitching about your operating system, you are not invalidating my point.

Some things are objectively evil, and other things are objectively good. Just because we are subjective beings doesn't mean we can't try to figure out what those things are. Perception only makes SUBJECTIVE reality, so no amount of "But I think raping babies for drug money is good" will change the fact you aren't talking about objective reality.

I think without getting stupid we can all agree there is an internet that exists, objectively.

So, if objective reality exists, we just have to guess what it is, that doesn't mean it stops being objective and becomes something you can just change because you feel like it.

Don't be an ass.

That all said, now that I headed off 95% of the arguments before they happen.

All you are talking about is hypotheticals. The Trolly problem. Do you flip the switch to kill one man to save five? Do you let one person suffer so the entire world can know happiness?

The problem isn't the question. The problem is when people are fooled into believing there are only two choices.

There's a street scam where you hide a ball under a cup and there are three cups. if you guess the right cup, you double your money. You fail, you lose your money. The guy hides the ball, moves the cups around, you guess.

For the guy before you, he wins quite a bit. The guy running the scam says, "Under which cup is the ball?"

When its your turn, the guy asks, "Where's the ball?"

Now, the ball can be anywhere, but you THINK you are limited to three cups. Every answer you think you are allowed is wrong, because the ball is in his pocket. He didn't ask which cup. He asked, where is it?

You went in, thinking the rules had to be one way, when there is always a chance to change the rules.

Your example is like that scam. You think you are limiting the readers choices, when most readers will come up with a hundred different ways to absolutely body your scenario.

Just keep that in mind.

 

[SailusGebel]

Everything is redeemable.

 

[LesserSarcasm]

Remember what is considered evil is what runs counter to the society, not our society. If canabilism of rival societies allows the society to flourish then canabilism will be looked at in a positive light same as human sacrifice to gods demon fae etc, long as it benefits the society.

 

[Voidiris]

I was fascinated by the reaction that can happen when a character doesn't do anything wrong, behaves kindly, is otherwise sympathetic but when readers learn their identity they suddenly turn on them and see all their actions in the new light even though nothing has changed but their preconceptions. How a character can divert from or feed into those preconceptions fascinates me.

I see, someone with a fellow fascination.

It's fascinating how a reader might interpret even the most insignificant actions of a character they think is evil as a clear sign of their eventual evil doing or if they think a character is virtuous then every positive sign will be a note of that virtue.

I think that's only true for one dimensional characters or people think that it's true for characters they see as one dimensional or less than human.

It's a complicated thought without any easy answers. But I was just wondering considering the nature of all those factors, what is good and what is evil. Are either absolute? How can they vary and how might a character transition to evil or to good credibly and what might be a point past redemption or past corruption?

Well it's a matter of perceptionism and relativism, the opinion on if a person is evil or good is made up about what we perceive about a person, the knowledge we have perceived, and our identity (ideology/religion, memory, personality) values that we possess.

If you don't know any actions that are evil for you about a person this person will be good in your eyes. You need to have perceived a person to judge said person.

Some that believe in determinism (like me) don't believe free will truly exist, if your parents only showed love through abuse and that's all the love you ever had, how could it be weird that the person would become violent? The best example are personality disorders that make it hard to behave not evil, like narcissism disorder, can the narcissist be blamed to be born without empathy with a huge ego? Does it matter how much the narcissist doesn't want to be themself, there are some cases of psychopaths that felt like they never had control over themself. What if to such people happens what happened in my first example, how much can they be blame to become who they are.

The same can be said about those that are virtuos, aren't they virtuos because someone thought them or indoctrinated, the word is fitting because morals are accepted uncritical without thought in many cases, an example would be the empath, does it make them moral because they are always empathic and helpful but have never chosen to be empathetic or helpful.

Many people that say that morality is subjectively will say that, but there comes always an example where there suddenly say this is objectively immoral, to give credit most of these examples are quite easy to call immoral, still no matter ho immoral or moral act appears to be, it's still subjective. That shows another importance of perceptionism in this argument, they called these acts objectively immoral because they see it as a truth, I think that shows that they don't see morality as something subjective but that they are just more open minded.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Perception and perspective are interesting, you could write the purest, most objectively good character, and people would still call them evil when you slot them as antagonists. Same with pure villainous scum. If the characters align with the goals of one of your perspectives the readers will almost automatically start to like them more than the ones working against said perspective, unless it's a Hollywood or Disney movie.

The easiest way to improvise a stupid MC-centric alignment chart in a story is this:
Does the character do something that helps MC? They're good.
Does the Character do something that looks like it helps the MC, but hurts them in the later run? They're evil.
Does the Character hurt the MC knowing it will help them in the later run? They're good.
Does the Character hurt the MC knowing it will not help them in the later run? They're evil.

And for the lesser forms of writing (aka power fantasy progression harem):
Does the Character like someone that looks like they're from the other sex? Pure evil, needs to be extinct ASAP!
Does the Character want something the MC wants? Pure evil, needs to be extinct ASAP!
Is the Character denying or disagreeing with something the MC says or does and NOT from the other sex? Pure evil, needs to be extinct ASAP!
Is the Character denying or disagreeing with something the MC says or does from the other sex? Add to harem, because other sex, but bully them until they drone whatever MC wants.

 

[laccoff_mawning]

Morality and redemption are based solely on the character of God.