Protagonist morals

[StuartBurchell]

Going to tv space opera, BBC's Blake's 7 in particular, I always liked Avon more than Blake.

Blake was the typical white hat hero, never hit a woman and won't shoot somebody in the back whilst Avon would let Tarrant blunder about distracting the other guy then turn up and shoot him in the back. Uh, the other guy, not Tarrant.

Avon was the sarcastic sceptic who didn't believe in the Cause but tagged along because he knew he couldn't survive without Blake and co. He was mistrustful of everyone and ruthless, willing to kill anyone who got in his way. Whist he was sceptical of Blake's Cause, he, underneath it all, wanted to believe. Once Blake was gone, he still couldn't escape him, be his own man. And despite his badmouthing and self-centric me first attitude, he would usually go to his shipmates aid when he could, even if it meant putting his own life in the firing line.

I said Avon never trusted anyone fully, there was one man he did believe in, and probably despised himself for it. And when it appeared that that one man had sold him out, he couldn't handle it and led to misunderstanding and disaster and perhaps the best ending in sci-fi tv history.

Years later, I realised Blake would have been a better character if he had some of Avon's characteristics.

Hmmm, seems more like a review of Blake's 7 than about a protagonist's morals.

Okay, as someone mentioned A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin, Eddard Stark, with the white hat morality code got himself and his entire household dead while his family were scattered to the four corners of Westeros because he refused to play the game the way his enemies did. He refused to change the way he lived and paid the price.

For a protagonist to survive the trials set before him by chance and adversary, he must bend, perhaps come to some climax where he must choose to follow his beliefs and moral standpoint or do what he must to save somebody (not necessarily someone he loves or respect). The pacifist thou shall not kill Old West hero who has to take up the gun to defend what he believes or to throw that gun away to stand for his beliefs.

I think I lost what I was trying to say...

 

[hopewrites]

After reading the thread, I realize where my line is.

It has to be a morality of sorts. The character has to feel that they are acting in their own moral code. What ever that moral code is.

I feel that a lot of people think that criminals dont operate under a moral code because they dont operate under the normal moral code. I'd love to be wrong! But for me the fact remains that people do what they do because somewhere in their reality they feel they must. So if you have a character doing things that I disagree with, I want to know why that character feels they must. (Hell, even if I agree I want to know why they feel they must.) Even if I never find out, if I get the sense that the character knows, then I'll probably still give it a pass.

Thinking back over all the books I love, all the main characters involved in the story had a moral code. The story comes when those codes collide, or drive them by divergent paths to the same goal (though not always the same end), or take them through a mental/emotional/moral evolution.
In a D&D morality test I come up Chaotic Good almost every time (I got Neutral Good once, but I was having an off day.) but what does this say about me as a character? What I see is that my moral code has room for rule breaking, if the reason is good enough. Do other people see me that way? Probably not, it would depend on how I was written. I have had friends who were convinced that I was incapable of breaking the slightest rule, and others who repeatedly told me that I twisted rules and guidelines to suit my own devious whims and that I was not to be trusted in any sense of the word.

My intimate friends could not be convinced of these things if they were not both true. Characters must have dichotomy. These dichotomies create inner-conflict that inform the characters decisions, and thereby shape their path.

What if your character has a moral imperative to please their mate. Not necessarily a bad moral ground to stand on, though there are people who would disagree with that stance based on the gender of the pleaser... but let's leave that aside for the moment. Now let's look at the moral fiber of the mate being pleased, if their moral code does not hold life of any kind dear, it would stand to reason that whether or not the pleaser held life dear they would go along with the destruction (perhaps even wanton destruction) of life because they perceived that their going along pleased their mate.

This is a character with a story, with a hook, that people will relate to, root for. Why? Because there is a common ground. People like to be liked, they understand the allure (if not the addition) that pleasing people we love has. People get into relationships with people of different moral standings, strong relationships if the differences dont come up till way down the road. Then they have to face a choice to maintain the relationship at the cost of personal moral standing, or to maintain moral standing at the cost of the relationship. Perhaps not total coast, but each time it comes up they have to remake the choice. People are funny, in that if a character doesnt go with whichever of the two is stronger in themselves, they better have gone with the choice the reader would have made. (I lose respect for characters who don't go with which ever of the two is stronger. But that's probably because I firmly believe that every person -fictional or not- is responsible to their own moral code, not mine.) Which doesnt mean they have to make the same choice every time. If the relationship of the character above weakens, it would be expected that their own moral ground would need to be stood, perhaps even reclaimed if time and repeated choices had diminished it. If the relationship is strengthened rather than destroyed by this ground-standing, that would strengthen the ground being stood because it would now have the backing of the moral imperative to please.

These mental-emotional machinations are the foundation for "Truth is stranger than Fiction," the twists and binds that people put themselves through are fascinatingly complex and nearly always impossible to unravel completely. Self-awareness, or rather its lack, limits the extent to which a person may be reasonably unraveled and their motives exposed.
"Why did you participate in this heinous act?"
"They told me to,"
"Why do what they tell you?"
"Because I love them,"
"Why love a person capable of this heinous act?" -lots of self-awareness's breaks down here
"Plausible deniability, I didnt know it was like that until X time ago,"
"Why love them after you found out?"
"Habit/ our relationship was stronger than my initial moral dislike/ denial -I thought it was just a game, not really real," -not many self-awareness's can stand up and give this kind of answer.
"We're back to 'why go along?'"
"it wasnt because I wanted to!"
"Then what was it?"
"I didnt want to be left behind more than I didnt want to participate."
"Not being left behind means that much to you?"
"Yes."

From this conversation we finally weddel it out of the character that the moral imperative of not being left behind won out over the moral imperative to not do whatever heinous act they were in the interrogation room for. From there others will go looking to see if this was simple pack mentality carried too far, or the result of prior abuse, or some other causation.

IDK maybe it's my upbringing, but I know that the first reason people give for their actions is less likely to be the real reason, and more likely to be the reason they feel they can get away with. "Why did you eat my candy?" Real reason, I wanted it. Answer "I didnt think you would mind."

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I wouldn't say that not being left behind was a moral imperative. I'd say it was an emotional one, or perhaps, in some circumstances, a survival imperative. People are often caught between a variety of these: psychological, cultural, physiological, etc. Some might have a stronger hold on a particular individual than any moral code that individual might have. A weak-willed person will go with whatever is easiest and most comfortable, no matter what their conscience tells them.

On the other hand, there are individuals who actually believe that they are entitled to have whatever they want, whatever they are strong enough to take. They may reach for it in spite of the consequences to others. They have no moral code when it comes to what benefits them. But if others stand in their way, they become indignant. They feel that those others have done wrong, and that they themselves have been personally injured, whether the thing they wanted was something they needed or not. They believe in rules, just not for themselves. The more strong-willed they are, the more likely they are to do things that another person would do because they are weak willed and someone told them to.

 

[Loren]

Hi team,

I'm just musing aloud here, and it's not part of a project I have so I don't have any specific examples but do you think it's possible to have your main protagonists a morally bad character (in terms of our culture) and still have them as a readable, likeable and root-for-able character?

Some general examples I can come up with are being a willing slaver replete with the meanness and beatings, or cruel/evil to animals for no reason, or an active sexual predator. Even if it fits the setting, character or story, is there some things that a reader just won't acceept in our world?

I know there are stories from the point of view of murderers (I haven't read any though) which do similar things quite well and successfully, but I also know that in many people's eyes murder is the a lesser evil when compared with some of the above. There can be as many redeemable features of this character as you want/need, but is it necessary that the protagonist conform to our worlds morals and become the slave sympathiser or the animal rights activist etc.

I know there was a thread about good vs evil fairly recently, but I'm not sure it touched on this issue specifically.

Thanks for you time

Of course. I just finished a Novel called Lightless (Spoiler Alert). I would not necessarily rate it as a stunning novel, but two of the main characters were thieves and killers.

Yet at the end of the story you find out that one of them destroys the Earth which frees the rest of the solar system from the tyranny of a political system that was heartlessly oppressive. Their motivations were not necessarily altruistic, but the story, itself, worked. Both bad guys escape.

It all boils down to an exploration of the human condition. Must every story have a Disney ending? Clearly not.

However, many stories pit evil against good. Shakespeare took this a bit further with his heroes and villains. His characters are dynamic and delve deeply into their internal conflicts and are played out such that the audience is firmly rooted in their struggles and can readily identify with them. This is what makes his work so propelling and timeless. It's not the happy ending that people always crave, but the sense that they can resonate with the mortal internal conflicts that are the backbone of the human experience.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Lawrence Block writes many bad-guy protagonists, and they're always likable fellows that you root for. Bernie Rhodenbarr is a burglar, Keller is a hitman. And a sort of co-protagonist in Random Walk is a serial murderer of women. Another of his recent standalone novels was about a woman who went on a killing spree to rid herself of all her past lovers.

 

[Rob83]

In my own opinion a well-written protagonist shouldn't really have their own moral code rather than one that is in line with the world around them, with the possible exception of satires. It helps making them distinct from the other characters in the story as it will help shape and provide emphasis for their thoughts, words and actions. Having said that I have always had a soft spot for a well-written anti-hero; as Loren stated above the internal conflict that a person goes through fighting against their own nature for the "greater good" of their cause can sometimes be the most gripping aspect of a novel.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think the main problem with an immoral or non-virtuous protagonist is that you’re immediately getting rid of a large reason to read the book. One of the main reasons people read novels is to achieve some sort of resolution: the murder is solved, the crime avenged, the invaders defeated etc. Without that sense of (comparative) good being done, you’ve lost a lot of potential readers. Even a book like A Clockwork Orange, which has no virtuous characters apart from victims of crime, does have a strong moral sense.

It's also worth pointing out that characters are often sympathetic because they're generally reasonable people rather than because they're entirely like us or hold to our moral outlook. Their enemies are obviously evil and completely incompatible with us, and the characters are responding to an undeserved attack of some kind or are underdogs. The usual trick is for the author not to disclose Fantasy Knight X's views about gay rights or peasant solidarity and leave him fighting the orc horde. There's also the point that the reader will often identify with the doing character, the one who is actively trying to improve his situation, which doesn't guarantee morality.

Personally, I find more high-minded moral characters to be more interesting, because you’ve always got the question of how they try to stick to their morals when real life intervenes. A lot of “rogue” type characters feel very similar to me: world-weary in a boring way, bad with authority and good with the laydees, and destined for a heroic death or a predictable conversion to lawful good when the right opportunity comes along.