I have often said that my stories tend to write themselves after a couple of chapters, and it’s true. Once I establish and flesh out the characters, the world, and the situation and circumstances, they always tend to take on a life of their own. Nowhere is that more true than with the crossover fan fiction novel I wrote called “Chronicles of Narnia: The Western Darkness” combining the worlds of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” (with additional material from their respective spin-off games and movie adaptations) and in particular, the eighth chapter of that book. This has always been the most controversial and difficult chapter I've ever written. I didn't like it or understand it myself and considered removing it or changing it somehow except that it's necessary to move the story along and adds another look at the horrors of this kind of war. I would go to work on altering it and then be unable to actually do anything with it, and give up. Something was keeping me from changing it.
In my Narnia/LOTR fanfic, jusr before the four kings and queens of Narnia return home to England at the end of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” Orcs discover Narnia a few days east of Mordor and begin a kind of invasion to strip it of resouces. The Narnians respond by declaring war after talking animals and dryads are slaughtered. I wrote that Aslan, in a private conversation with High King Peter, ordered the slaughter of every orc the Narnian army came across in a similar vein to the Israelites slaughtering the Canaanites. As the Orcs would show no mercy, as an irredeemable race (in keeping with Tolkien’s views) neither were the Narnians to show any to the Orcs. After learning this lesson the hard way upon their first true battle, the Narnians comply as they march into Mordor from the east. This goes relatively smoothly, if distastefully, until chapter eight.
In chapter 8 is where this policy of orc genocide results in an atrocity no one expected. The army comes across human women held as sex slaves for Sauron’s Orcs, and among them are half-orc infants. Not wanting to disobey Aslan’s orders, “every Orc,” Peter gives the order to slay them. The Narnians all balk at the very thought, all except the Minotaurs who carry out his orders of infanticide to the letter. No one is unaffected. Everyone hates what happened, and it leaves Peter to wallow in Dwarven ale trying to dull the pain, while others weep openly.
I hated that chapter when I wrote it. Some of my readers were horrified by it too, wondering if Aslan himself was an evil character in my story. It’s haunted me since that point now for several years, and I never understood why I wrote it in the first place. I could have left the brothels out, but that would have been unrealistic, and even Tolkien wrote about half-orcs in his novel. They had to come from somewhere, and I just can’t see a human woman willingly give herself to an orc. It would have been unrealistic that they wouldn’t have run into it. But I hated it, and didn’t understand it. Not until the other day when it hit me.
I realized something important about that chapter; a detail that everyone, including me, had overlooked. Aslan never said a word about the half-orc children. He never said anything about half-orcs at all. Peter assumed that his instructions extended to them. That was Peter's interpretation of his orders.
And then I realized, that was the point.
It had nothing to do with Aslan's orders, and everything to do with how Peter understood them in a situation that wasn't specified. He made what he considered the "right" decision in order to obey, even though it was really an atrocity as both his gut and his heart were screaming at him. Peter was a good and noble man who wouldn’t have even thought of this kind of action under any other circumstances. But because he had been told “every orc,” he assumed that meant “everyone with orc blood,” and had everyone with orc blood put to the sword. No exceptions.
There is another character from Fallout 4 called “Paladin Danse” who is like this. Paladin Danse is a good, honorable, and noble man who firmly believes in the ideals and values of the Brotherhood of Steel whose objective is to keep dangerous technology out of dangerous hands. But Danse believes in the BoS and their code so strongly, that he has absolutely no trouble with slaughtering “synths,” that is, synthetic humans or androids (in addition to mutated humans whether they’re hostile or not). When it is discovered that he himself is a synth, he not only willingly submits to execution, but if you fail to persuade him otherwise and refuse to do it yourself, he will take his own life.
Sometimes, in seeking to do the right thing, we can commit horrendous harm. As flawed, malfunctioning human beings, we can identify with and adhere to a belief system (or their interpretation of that belief system) so rigidly that an otherwise good man or woman can commit the most heinous of acts and not even be aware that they’re doing the wrong thing. They may sincerely believe that “it’s for the greater good” even as their victim is pleading with them to stop, or screaming and in tears. We’re just trying to live by the code or morality we believe in or identify with. We’re just trying to do what we think we’re supposed to be doing even if our empathy and compassion is screaming at us that we’re causing atrocious harm and evil.
Peter paid for his orders with nightmares and PTSD in my story. Depending on which decisions you make in the game, Danse pays for his rigid adherence to what he believes is right with his life. In real life, a person may pay for not listening to their compassion and empathy with guilt that can never be satiated in addition to other consequences.
Compassion, empathy, and love are the only standards by which an action may be guaranteed to not cause harm. Loving kindness and compassion are never the wrong choice, and are not governed by any moral code or ideology, but by feeling what the other person is feeling, and seeing yourself in that person.
No comments:
Post a Comment