  Drama
This week: Incorporating Evil Edited by: Kit of House Lannister  
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Incorporating a force of evil in your story can captivate your readers. But what is evil? The Milgram experiment has shown that it can come in many different forms...
This week's Drama Newsletter, then, is all about the dark side of human nature.
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What is evil? Many people would say that it doesn't exist. They'd probably admit to there being good and bad, and great and plain awful, but evil is a loaded term. My thoughts rest along similar lines. I have encountered some terrible things in life, but evil? I don't know. That doesn't mean that I cannot imagine it. And that doesn't mean that I cannot use the concept of evil in my writing. Elements of evil can add to the dramatic impact of a story – what would you do in the face of it?
Evil can come in many forms. It can take the shape of a person – a vampire, for example, or a zombie, or a vengeful spirit. More realistically, it can come in the form of a serial killer. If such a person is not acknowledged as evil, their actions can certainly invoke the same terror and grief as those committed by evil.
It can come in the form of a government oppressing its population. It can be felt in war. It can exist in people who thought that they were good, and who are probably decent enough, turning to dark deeds.
The thing with evil is that many of us don't want to believe in it. It is outside of our experience. We're not evil, and we therefore cannot possibly comprehend it. We love, we care, we can feel empathy. We do not take joy in the suffering of others. We'll help when we can. How, then, can we know what it is to not feel any of those things?
What drives a mind to cruelty? What drives a nation to cruelty? Or to at least ignore cruelty?
Glimpses can be caught of this even in modern times, when we would like to think that we have moved on from the dark days of our history. It is seen in the dehumisation of others, when we know what such dehumanisation can lead to.
I am reminded of the Milgram experiment. Those who are interested in psychology will be familiar with it, but I will explain it to those who haven't heard of it. Carried out by Stanley Milgram in 1961, it was a study on obedience to authority, and the conflict this can bring with one's personal conscience.
Participants thought that they were being split into two different roles – the teacher and the learner. In fact, the learner would always be an actor, unbeknownst to the person placed in the role of the teacher – he or she would think that it was a case of random selection. As a teacher, the subject had to ask questions of the learner, and if the learner gave the wrong answer, in the form of word pairs, the teacher had to give the learner an electric shock of increasing intensity.
The teacher and the learner were in different rooms. Yet, at the beginning of the experiment, in the presence of the teacher, the learner would ask if his heart condition would be a problem. As the experiment progressed, the teacher would hear screams of pain, banging on the wall, complaints about the heart condition. Yet they'd be told by the leader of the experiment – the authority figure – that they must continue. That the experiment require that they continue. Much as many became uncomfortable, questioned the experiment, showed signs of stress, once told that the authority figure would take responsibility for their actions, most carried on. In fact, 65 percent of participants gave the final, 450-volt shock, after the learner had stopped responding.
The shocks were fake, of course. But the participants didn't know that. I would like to think that I would have refused to give even the mildest of shocks. I believe that I certainly wouldn't have continued when the learner showed signs of discomfort or pain. What makes me so different from the participants, though? Could I have deceived myself into thinking that it was okay to carry on? That, as I wasn't in the place of ultimate responsibility, this would absolve me of my actions?
I feel awful if I so much as hurt anyone accidentally. I can't watch even fictional cruelty. That makes me believe that something inside me would stop me. Yet, the people participating in the experiment probably thought the same. And the experiment was repeated in different countries, in later years, and the results were all very similar.
Is that the true evil in human nature? The ability to absolve oneself from responsibility, even in the knowledge that you are causing harm? “I was just following orders.” “The experiment requires that you continue.”
Perhaps it is easier to write about vampires and zombies, than to write about regular people committing atrocities. Still, evil in all its forms can be a useful ingredient to use in a drama story. It is certainly interesting to explore – both the motivations of your characters, and the ways that your hero/heroine can overcome them.
Kit of House Lannister
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Drama: June 08, 2016 Issue [#7685]
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