The Ethics of Fiction

This week at our meeting, we talked about Haley's new project, a fiction piece (novel? short story? long form essay?—we'll know when she does) based on a crime committed in Idaho in the 1980s. The first section she submitted this week was riveting and started a long discussion about how important fiction can be. Without giving too much away (you'll have to wait for the highly anticipated book/short story/long form essay release: you heard it here first), this piece forces the reader to examine preconceived notions about people's "goodness" or "evilness." More specifically, does an "evil" person deserve to die at our hands when humanity is far from black and white?

This got me thinking (again) about how important what we do is. You know us writers: we have shameful egos, so a favorite topic is always our own importance. Joking aside, though, art truly is an astonishingly significant force in societal conscience. Think of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin or Charles Dickens's many novels illuminating the lives of England's poor. It's not that America didn't know the facts about slavery before Uncle Tom's Cabin; abolitionists had been holding rallies and distributing pamphlets for decades already. But Stowe's compelling narrative and three-dimensional characters mobilized a nation in a way facts and figures hadn't yet—and maybe never could.

Haley's piece asked us all to examine our assumptions about criminals, and how we as a society punish them when perhaps we've also created them. It made me think of C.S. Lewis' quote from The Abolition of Man:

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." 

Lewis contends that society shares blame for the criminal's wrongdoing, especially through our systems of education and law.

Haley's story reminds us that criminals are humans and that we as a society bear some burden for their wrong. But she's not doing it the J'Accuse way: there's no strongly-worded letter to the editor or discussion points at the end of each chapter. She's simply laying out the story—based on real facts—and asking the reader to see a different side of reality. We may not even notice we're being encouraged to think while we read the fascinating story.

Dickens did this particularly well, especially through his use of sarcasm and wit. His characters were so brilliantly layered that their soapbox moments conveyed Dickens's opinions without heavy-handed editorialization or didactic prose.* One of my favorite examples is in Oliver Twist, where Dickens's thoughts on capital punishment are clearly articulated through the mouth of Fagin in a moment of clever dramatic irony:

“What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. The prospect of the gallows, too, makes them hardy and bold. Ah, it’s a fine thing for the trade! Five of them strung up in a row, and none left to play booty or turn white-livered!”

The author's position is articulated with humor and irony, and the reader is confronted with the task of thinking.

Not all of us are working on groundbreaking ethical dilemmas, of course. But Lindsey's 90s nostalgia and Tasha's thoughts on love and loss and Emery's scathing deconstruction of modern weddings—they're all equally powerful. Whether it's Ashley's young adult fiction about military kids or my memoirs of early motherhood, writing is important. It's important because it keeps us human, it keeps us connected. And maybe connection is part of how we, as a society, bear the burden of each other's wrongs. Maybe connection is our starting point for looking for an answer to the tough questions.

In case you're wondering, yes, this is an appropriate time to break out in song. 

*I realize this point is debatable, but hey. I think Dickens isn't too didactic to be enjoyable. I guess that's probably because I agree with him.