What if we are the monsters? If you haven't ever thought about that, you probably haven't read the same writers I have. Some (very good) writers ask us to get inside the heads of their characters and look at some not-so-pretty truths about the potential for evil in all of us.

• In Atonement, Ian McEwan demonstrates just how much suffering could be unleashed by the thoughtless actions of a 13-year-old girl with literary pretensions. (Thanks for the great summary, Minorvogonpoet!) McEwan's point is not that Briony is unusually monstrous, or even that writers are. It is that this level of monster is potentially within an ordinary human. (Even writers.)
• A lot of the time, what turns an ordinary person into a monster is a wrong decision. Think of the television series Breaking Bad. Creator Vince Gilligan's original intention was to break the main character out of the usual unrealistically imposed stasis and progress him from protagonist to antagonist. He succeeded. He also succeeded in his intention of demonstrating that 'actions have consequences.' Breaking Bad is not comfortable fiction. No fiction that tells that much truth is comfortable. But it's worth a hundred Marvel comics.
• Often, the move from ordinary human to monster is incremental, as in Cecil Philip Taylor's play Good. The main character, a German university professor in the 1930s, follows a step-by-step path to personal damnation as his thinking and actions slide down the gentle slope of acquiescence, until he finds himself face-to-face with the full nightmare of the 20th Century. Throughout, there's an orchestra playing in his head.
  
  This play is amazingly effective. I had a small part in a college production of Good once. By request, we took the show up the road to another college. We did this with considerable trepidation: there were Holocaust survivors in the audience. There were a lot of tears, both onstage and off. They were kind and thanked us for our efforts. Sometimes, the best thing you can do with your art is recognise that ordinary humans can become monsters, and that it's your job to talk about it.

One of the things about writing, if it's honest, is that it makes a record of the past that the future can learn from. We can do this. Louisa May Alcott didn't have a time machine – which is a shame, really, because I can't escape the feeling that she'd have been much, much happier as a millennial. I can imagine her debating feminism with Camille Paglia on Twitter. For her day, Alcott knew a lot about cutting-edge pedagogical theory, due to her family connections.

'You cannot be too careful; watch your tongue, and eyes, and hands, for it is easy to tell, and look, and act untruth,' said Mr. Bhaer, in one of the talks he had with Nat about his chief temptation.


'I know it, and I don't mean to, but it's so much easier to get along if you ain't very fussy about being exactly true. I used to tell 'em because I was afraid of father and Nicolo, and now I do sometimes because the boys laugh at me. I know it's bad, but I forget,' and Nat looked much depressed by his sins.


'When I was a little lad I used to tell lies! Ach! what fibs they were, and my old grandmother cured me of it how, do you think? My parents had talked, and cried, and punished, but still did I forget as you. Then said the dear old grandmother, 'I shall help you to remember, and put a check on this unruly part,' with that she drew out my tongue and snipped the end with her scissors till the blood ran. That was terrible, you may believe, but it did me much good, because it was sore for days, and every word I said came so slowly that I had time to think. After that I was more careful, and got on better, for I feared the big scissors. Yet the dear grandmother was most kind to me in all things, and when she lay dying far away in Nuremberg, she prayed that little Fritz might love God and tell the truth.'


'I never had any grandmothers, but if you think it will cure me, I'll let you snip my tongue,' said Nat, heroically, for he dreaded pain, yet did wish to stop fibbing.


Mr. Bhaer smiled, but shook his head.


'I have a better way than that, I tried it once before and it worked well. See now, when you tell a lie I will not punish you, but you shall punish me.'
Little Men, Chapter 4: Stepping-Stones, courtesy of Gutenberg.

This story is so far beyond our imagination that it might as well be taking place in ancient Egypt, or on Mars. Who does stuff like that? It turns out that Fritz Bhaer, who is a proponent of the 'modern' German school of childhood education, has a plan. When Nat tells a lie, he makes Nat hit him, Mr Bhaer, on the palm with a ferrule. This causes Nat so much emotional distress that he stops telling lies. Now, inducing PTSD in kids is not a recommended technique these days. Reading things like this gives us a queasy feeling of complicity. This is good. We're learning.

And learning is what keeps us from becoming monsters. Writing the truth is our way of helping to nudge the world in the right direction. It certainly beats 19th-century 'progressive' education.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

25.11.19 Front Page

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