The Face of Total Need

I've been thinking a lot about Evil.

I'm pretty wary of using that word. One man's evil is another man's sacrament, after all. Leaving twin infants on a hillside to die of exposure might well be called evil; but there have been cultures on this planet that considered such a thing necessary-- because they believed twins were evil.

But are all such ideas of evil relative? Or is there some overarching, capital-E Evil out there, something that's fundamentally wrong?

Well, if that means built-into-the-fabric-of-the-universe wrong, then no, I don't think so. (Long digression: I'm an atheist, for those of you who don't know-- an atheist in the sense that I lack any theism. I don't argue with anyone else's religious choices, I just haven't discovered any that work for me. I don't believe in god, gods, souls, reincarnation or an afterlife-- which isn't to say that I think people who believe in those things are stupid. I'm vastly outnumbered on this subject, and lots of the people who believe fervently in God or gods are much smarter and more sensitive than I am. I could well be wrong. But for me, the issue comes down to faith, to listening for still small voices and peering deep inside-- and there's nothing Divine there. Nothing except humanness, which can be the next best thing to divine, in my opinion. Someday a light might dawn upon me and convert me… but I doubt it. Nor do I feel the least bit bereft. Religion is simply a non-issue in my life; except when I have to deal with religious people who don't respect that fact) I don't think there's an Evil any more than I think there's a Good Literature or a Beauty. One man's Beauty is another man's Grotesque-- it's all about your frame of reference.

That said, of course I have a frame of reference-- I'm a human being living in this particular moment. I'll leave the real screeching hypotheticals to those who are better suited for such things. I'll look at evil, Evil, from my perspective.

I've read a lot about this subject, actually, especially lately, because it bears on a book I want to write (I'll get to that; it's what inspired this whole ramble). William Burroughs wrote that "the face of evil is always the face of total need." I like that-- I wonder if Burroughs was thinking of his own "total need" on some level, if he considered the things he'd done while on heroin "evil."

I read about Terry Gilliam meeting with George Lucas after Brazil came out. Gilliam was surprised to find that Lucas considered Darth Vader really, truly evil-- because as far as Gilliam's concerned, Vader is just "the man in the black hat-- you see him coming a mile away." Gilliam's idea of evil is Michael Palin's character from Brazil, who'll sell you out and stab you in the back for his own benefit, smiling all the while, unaware of the depth of his own vice.

I'm no sure either of those notions of evil really qualifies as top-shelf, real Evil for me. I have, perhaps, a simpler criterion.

But before I get into that, another digression (this one planned) into the realm of Sympathetic Villains.

At Clarion, one of my instructors talked to me about something she saw as both a strength and a weakness in my work: My antagonists are sympathetic. Readers can understand why they behave the way they do, can see the motivations that lead them to make such terrible decisions ("terrible" in the sense of being horrifying, not that they're poor decisions). To me, truly effective villains have to be thinking beings. Movies and stories with mindless monsters or hopelessly deranged killers seem to lack something for me-- they become stories of man against nature, man against inhuman force. But when evil has a human face… that's something. But sometimes my villains are too sympathetic, and since I tend to have flawed protagonists as well, the lines get blurry, and sympathies get twisted around. Which is not necessarily a bad effect, but sometimes it works against my intentions-- I want you to hate the Lizard God or Bludgeon Man or whomever, and instead, you say "Well, hell, I'd probably have done the same thing in that situation."

Normally, this doesn't bother me too much. A little ambiguity is good for the soul (which I said earlier I don't think you have; but it's a figure of speech, you understand), and that ambiguity is one of the themes I keep coming back to. But, last year, I decided I wanted to write about a character who really was Evil. It was a story designed to play with several clichés, among them the Villain who wants to Destroy the World. That always seemed like a fairly odd goal, to me, but (for various reasons) I wanted to have an antagonist who really did have that intention. That character worked pretty well in that context, I think-- she's mysterious, and so are her motivations. Keeping her so mysterious was one way to keep her from being too sympathetic, of course…

Now I'm faced with an idea for a novel, wherein that same Destroy the World Villainess plays a big part. She's the main antagonist, in fact, and I have lots of nifty ideas for the things she can do… but I have a problem as well.

I have a really, really hard time thinking about her.

It's easy for me to decide, in a short story, to have this wicked, not-obviously-deranged Villainess who wants to destroy the earth for her own inscrutable reasons. I don’t have to think about her much, then; she's a plot device. But for the novel, I need to know her better, understand her, and I need to tell part of the story from her point of view.

My protagonist is a professional imposter, a spy, a master-of-disguise, and a method actor. One of his principle attributes is empathy. The reason he's so good at his job is that he really understands the people he impersonates, but it's not something he does intentionally for his job-- he just always tries to see the world through other peoples' eyes, to understand why they behave the way they do. One of the major points in this novel hangs on the fact that he's trying to understand the Villainess, to get inside the mind of a woman who seems to have it all-- health, beauty, wealth, intelligence-- and yet who wants to destroy the world.

And not even just that. If she just wanted to blow up the planet, hey, that's easy. I could come up with lots of good reasons she'd feel that way, want to do that-- reasons I can understand.

But the more I think of her, the more I realize that what she really wants is for everyone on earth to suffer, for a long time, before they die.

Everyone. You. Me. Bankers, musicians, cops, criminals… children. Everyone.

From my particular human perspective, that's Evil. Wanting other people to hurt, just for the sake of hurting them. Like Gilles de Rais did, murdering a hundred children because he liked to (assuming he really did; I've read some stuff recently that makes me doubt his guilt, but that's another entry). Like Ellison's computer in "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream."

My problem comes because, like my protagonist for this hypothetical novel, I want to understand. I've never written a major character I didn't know inside and out. And this Villainess is a major character, she's half of this novel. And when I think about her, try to get inside her head and into her skin and figure out how she'd react, what she'd do, how she thinks-- I get ill. I can't stand it. It's like swimming in filth.

Actually, it's more like staring into the abyss. I don't like to think I'm capable of understanding such a character. And yet she persists. I'm stuck. I could invent some trauma for her, find a good reason for her to want this (not that I think there's any reason good enough)… but then she'd cease to be so potent for me. She'd cease to be Evil, and just be screwed-up. Her Evil is self-aware. Her Evil goes into this with eyes open. I want her to be that way, the book demands it… but I don't know if I can write it.

This has held me up so far. It might hold me up so much that the book doesn't get written, at least, not the way I'd like it to be.

All she wants is pain. She's worse than the devil-- he wants souls, at least. He felt he'd lost God's favor, that he'd been cast aside. I can understand the devil.

This Villainess… I can't understand her, and I can't treat her like a force of nature, like something supernatural, because she's a person.

Hmm. Sorry to go on and on. This journal is very much for me, and writing things down helps me work them out… but I guess I didn’t figure much out tonight.

Ah, well.