Moral Ambiguity vs. Moral Complexity

[Mindfire]

One of the common criticisms of Tolkien I've seen is that his stories are too morally simplistic. (Whether this is true can be debated, but that's beside the point right now.) Meanwhile, authors like GRR Martin are praised for their "moral ambiguity." This puzzles me. Why is moral ambiguity praiseworthy? Why are we as a society so enamored of shades of grey? Why is it so popular to think that "everyone's equally right"/"everyone's equally wrong"/"there is no right or wrong"? It seems like a dangerous trend to me, because it fosters the idea that in a given situation it's impossible to know right from wrong rather than just really hard, which promotes a kind of moral nihilism. An attitude of "you may as well be an amoral prick, because that's what's going to get you ahead anyway." And anyone who even tries to cling to some semblance of a moral standard invariably gets screwed over because they weren't ruthless enough.

I reject moral ambiguity in favor of moral complexity. Rather than think that there's no real right or wrong, I prefer the idea that there is a right and wrong choice in a given situation, but you have to put in some effort to sort it out and be able to tell the difference. You have to wade into the quagmire and wrestle with the crocodiles rather than just wallow in it and let them eat you alive. Promoting moral ambiguity devalues human choice, because at the end of the day it doesn't matter what you choose so long as you "win" and the other guy "loses". With moral complexity, choices are difficult, but they have meaning and purpose. This makes victories all the more triumphant and losses or falls to corruption all the more tragic, because ultimately our choices make us who we are.

What do you guys think about this issue of moral simplicity, moral ambiguity, and moral complexity?

 

[Ankari]

I think you have to define the terms "moral ambiguity" properly. I wouldn't say that it means "everything is right" but that "all parties act in a manner that promotes personal and communal well-being". The interesting thing about moral ambiguity, especially in speculative fiction, is that true right and wrong are never as easily understood as we would like it to be.

This is how our lives are like. We do things to better our own agenda, as an individual or as a community. This can be seen when a resource is desired by two parties, but only one can have it. Whether that resource be adherents to a faith or the trillion dollars worth of minerals in a third world country, makes little difference. We (I) like moral ambiguity because it challenges to think beyond the ideas spoon-fed to me, and think for myself.

If you're not asking why a character is right in such books, then you missed the point. Why is this house deserving of a certain plot of land over the other? Why do we need to rid the world of the orc tribes? Why is the MC cheered for slaying the giant leader but MC2 is scorned for slaying the town mayor, one who promotes a policy that makes it hard for the poor to live?

Those are just examples of questions that I love to ask when I read morally ambiguous stories. The exercise of chipping away the coal to find the diamond of a pure moral justification, that's what gets my head in a book.

 

[Rullenzar]

There is nothing wrong with either one if done right.
Is LOTR any less great because a few people think Evil/Good is too simplistic? In my opinion that's as close to real fantasy as one can get.

Martin chose to be more realistic, the real world is covered in a shade of grey. One persons right is another persons wrong and vice versa. All Martin did was play around with human characteristics and took us on a journey into places we may choose to ignore in our daily lives. Showed us how far a person may go to defend ones honor or to save it. That even an evil act doesn't always make that person evil themselves. Evil/Good still exists in his world too, just with a more loose meaning. Yes, this brings the moral line in society to its knees but does that not make a great book? One that pushes a reader out of their comfort zone to experience something new and poke holes in their beliefs? Does this not make great characters? More complex in nature, gritty, almost to the verge of taboo for liking a character with these traits?

It's all based on preference. The great thing about writing is your free to play with your world in various ways. The fact that your questioning certain pieces of works means the Author achieved something. He made you remember him! And in this day and age everyone strives to be remembered, you don't want to be pushed under yesterdays newspaper and forgotten.

 

[BWFoster78]

I see it in the more general sense that it's bad to create two dimensional characters. Having the good guys be perfect with no flaws and on the side of Right is a bit weak. I like complex characters who perform their heroics for complex reasons. Sure, he wants to save the world, but isn't it okay that he also wouldn't mind making a bunch of money and winning the girl?

 

[Telcontar]

I don't think moral ambiguity in itself is a good thing. However, allowing for its existence is. In fact, I would term that an important part of moral complexity. Seeing the whole world as black and white is overly simplistic (few people will disagree with that) even if some situations can be seen that way.

Even in your definition of moral complexity you seem to imply that there is a right and wrong answer for every moral choice. I do not believe there is. Some choices have no morally correct answer. Thus any robust definition of moral complexity (in my mind) must acknowledge that.

I've written on the subject before, and there is a handy word which means something like "a system which acknowledges a region of morality between good and evil." I'll have to look up what I wrote and find it.

Edit: Found the phrase I was looking for, though I described it inaccurately above. It was "Supererogatory act." In short: "an act which it would be good to do, but not wrong not to do." If you're interested in further reading on the matter, Wikipedia has a decent article on it.

 

[ShortHair]

One way to look at it is that literature has evolved. In earlier times, the good guys were obviously good, their cause was just, and they always triumphed in the end. The real world isn't like that. We try to be good, we try to follow whatever moral code we've been taught, but we don't always succeed. Sometimes the right thing isn't obvious. Sometimes you don't have a good choice, and you have to decide between bad and worse. Sometimes you do what feels good regardless of the consequences.

Personally, I'd rather read about a flawed character. I identify with someone who isn't perfect because I'm not perfect. A hero who never makes mistakes is like an armchair quarterback. He's always right because he's never really been tested, never had to examine his beliefs.

One good reason for moral ambiguity in fiction is to help you refine your own beliefs. We say murder is always wrong. Suppose, though, that you could travel back in time, kill a dictator, and save a million lives. Is one murder wrong if it prevents a million? A no brainer, you say. What if you save a hundred? Still okay? What if it's only one? Most likely you won't have to make that choice, but it's possible, and if that time comes, you won't hesitate over the morality of it.

 

[Steerpike]

YOu can have flawed characters and still have absolute notions of good and bad. Also, while it "may" have been more common in Tolkien's time to have moral absolutes (certainly not all books were that way), I think it is pretty clear that readers and those who like stories today still find a more absolute good v. evil to resonate with them. Look at Star Wars, Harry Potter, the popularity of the LOTR films, and so on.

Either approach is just fine, and you can create compelling, complex works with either approach.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I'm with BWF... I think it really comes down to what kind of characters you want to write or read about. Furthermore, as a writer it gives me more room for my characters to grow in the character arc. When you have inherently good vs. inherently evil the space available for those characters to grow and change during the story's course is more limited.

I much prefer those character's who might be considered villains but I understand why they do some of the things they do. I don't have to condone those actions to understand. Understanding them makes them real. Also consider a character who may do immoral acts for good reasons. Perhaps they're misguided, perhaps they have little choice. If during the character arc I can empathize with even their bad choices, well that's just gonna make me like that character more & more.

An example from a current TV series:

Walter White from AMC's "Breaking Bad". A high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal lung cancer starts cooking methamphetamine so he doesn't leave his family destitute when he dies. He is plunged headlong into a criminal underworld, winds up losing touch with the family he's trying to protect, and slowly spirals from being the show's protagonist to being the antagonist. I'd never condone Meth.... But I understand his choice. It's wrong but that's a powerful story & an interesting character.

For me it has less to do with a story's concept than it does the characters involved.

Bad decisions make good stories.

 

[JonSnow]

One of the common criticisms of Tolkien I've seen is that his stories are too morally simplistic. (Whether this is true can be debated, but that's beside the point right now.) Meanwhile, authors like GRR Martin are praised for their "moral ambiguity." This puzzles me. Why is moral ambiguity praiseworthy? Why are we as a society so enamored of shades of grey? Why is it so popular to think that "everyone's equally right"/"everyone's equally wrong"/"there is no right or wrong"? It seems like a dangerous trend to me, because it fosters the idea that in a given situation it's impossible to know right from wrong rather than just really hard, which promotes a kind of moral nihilism. An attitude of "you may as well be an amoral prick, because that's what's going to get you ahead anyway." And anyone who even tries to cling to some semblance of a moral standard invariably gets screwed over because they weren't ruthless enough.

I reject moral ambiguity in favor of moral complexity. Rather than think that there's no real right or wrong, I prefer the idea that there is a right and wrong choice in a given situation, but you have to put in some effort to sort it out and be able to tell the difference. You have to wade into the quagmire and wrestle with the crocodiles rather than just wallow in it and let them eat you alive. Promoting moral ambiguity devalues human choice, because at the end of the day it doesn't matter what you choose so long as you "win" and the other guy "loses". With moral complexity, choices are difficult, but they have meaning and purpose. This makes victories all the more triumphant and losses or falls to corruption all the more tragic, because ultimately our choices make us who we are.

What do you guys think about this issue of moral simplicity, moral ambiguity, and moral complexity?

The right and wrong is for the readers to decide. I don't think by creating characters with "moral ambiguity" you are making them all equally moral. I'll use George R. R. Martin as a perfect example of this. There is not a single "perfect" character, who makes every morally "right" decision, nor are there any characters who are 100% evil, and not capable of doing the right thing. Even Cersei Lannister loves her children and does everything she can to protect them (even if her methods are morally questionable).

This is called reality. No real person is morally perfect. Everyone is tempted to do bad things for personal gain (though they may resist doing it), and even horrible people will do good things for those they love. And everyone has their vices, whether it be whores or gambling or alcohol. I think you are confusing ambiguity with equality. Nobody thinks Jaime Lannister and Ned Stark are equals morally (to use a Song of Ice and Fire reference), but to say Jaime is purely evil and Ned is morally perfect is just as wrong.

 

[Frog]

I think we've got a sliding scale, with two ultimate extremes.

On the far left (side picked at random, please avoid any kind of political reference here), there is a story with an obvious, absolute good and evil. The extreme on this scale contains Tolkien. This end of the scale also contains Terry Brooks, David Eddings, and a whole host of really classic fantasy authors. We can throw Star Wars into the mix as well. Rip on them all you want, I loved reading me some old-school good-battles-evil fiction.

On the other end of the scale, we have a world in which there simply is no Good and Evil. People are pointing to GRRM for this, and I'm not sure that's the extreme. Certainly, GRRM has the Great Other who is raising the White Walkers to send at humanity; that seems pretty close to an absolute Evil, even if there is no balancing force for Good. Ice and Fire is interesting because most of the actors prefer to pay attention to their petty squabbles instead of the real threat that's coming at them.

No, for the extreme lack of Good and Evil I would point to The Engineer Trilogy by K.J. Parker. Those books have such a dearth of good or evil in them that, once you're finished, you really feel the need to take a bit of a shower. What's interesting about them is that I don't consider them to be complex. In fact, the...let's call him the protagonist for convenience...the protagonist is very, very simple in his moral reasoning. Which is kind of the problem.

In between these two points on the scale are books where there is an absolute good and evil, but the characters have a hard time figuring out which is which.

Is one end preferable to the other? Not necessarily, but it tends to be a question of what you want to write. Invariably, a book that makes the reader think about morality is going to be more weighty. That said, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with picking up a book and reading about good slaying evil on a summer's day. It's not going to be really deep fiction, but that doesn't mean you won't enjoy reading it.

 

[Steerpike]

Frog, you should check out Joe Abercrombie. I like Best Served Cold the best, though all of his are good. The characters are not the conventional morally-upstanding figures of Fantasy literature. I like KJ Parker. I've only read The Company, by him, but I thought it was quite good.

 

[Frog]

I will check that out. Haven't read The Company yet, but I loved the Engineer stuff. I'll read yours if you read mine.

 

[Steerpike]

I will check that out. Haven't read The Company yet, but I loved the Engineer stuff. I'll read yours if you read mine.

Heh. Sounds good. I have the first of the Engineer books in my ever-growing "to-read" pile. I've heard good things about it.

 

[Mindfire]

I think you have to define the terms "moral ambiguity" properly. I wouldn't say that it means "everything is right" but that "all parties act in a manner that promotes personal and communal well-being". The interesting thing about moral ambiguity, especially in speculative fiction, is that true right and wrong are never as easily understood as we would like it to be.

This is how our lives are like. We do things to better our own agenda, as an individual or as a community. This can be seen when a resource is desired by two parties, but only one can have it. Whether that resource be adherents to a faith or the trillion dollars worth of minerals in a third world country, makes little difference. We (I) like moral ambiguity because it challenges to think beyond the ideas spoon-fed to me, and think for myself.

If you're not asking why a character is right in such books, then you missed the point. Why is this house deserving of a certain plot of land over the other? Why do we need to rid the world of the orc tribes? Why is the MC cheered for slaying the giant leader but MC2 is scorned for slaying the town mayor, one who promotes a policy that makes it hard for the poor to live?

Those are just examples of questions that I love to ask when I read morally ambiguous stories. The exercise of chipping away the coal to find the diamond of a pure moral justification, that's what gets my head in a book.

See, I think there's some confusion here. Because most of what you've said sounds more like moral complexity than moral ambiguity. Moral complexity = asking the hard questions. Moral ambiguity = "Who the **** cares?"

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

See, I think there's some confusion here. Because most of what you've said sounds more like moral complexity than moral ambiguity. Moral complexity = asking the hard questions. Moral ambiguity = "Who the **** cares?"

I would say that moral ambiguity is where the moral rightness of a character's ideals or actions are unclear. Moral rightness often depends on someone's point of view (the non-literary POV).

 

[Mindfire]

After reading the comments, people seem to be confused about what I mean when I say moral ambiguity vs complexity. I am not advocating flat or perfect characters by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps if I illustrate:

Morally Complex Story: Thoroughly human Protagonist is faced with an agonizingly difficult moral decision. Deep down he really does want to do the right thing. He looks at the problem, wrestles long and hard with it, and then, despite many hardships and dire sacrifices, he makes the right choice in the end. Or maybe he makes the wrong choice, and has to eternally abide the consequences or sinks deeper into evil as a result. If this happens, depending on how deep he sinks, he might repent and seek redemption.
I.E., there's a "good" and "bad" choice in there somewhere, even if they're not obvious, and whatever choice you make there are direct consequences.

Morally Ambiguous Story: Thoroughly human Protagonist is faced with an agonizingly difficult moral decision, but says "hand the hard work of sorting out the right thing to do here, I'll do as I please, morality be damned!" And then proceeds to pillage and rape and maybe give bread to orphans once in a while, but mostly pillage and rape. And (here's the key) the story/author is 100% okay with this. There are no consequences. No punishments for evil deeds, and certainly no rewards for good ones, though there might be punishments for those naive enough to put in some effort and figure out what the right thing to do is. Choices don't have consequences. There is only the whim of chance. Everyone's equally right because "right" doesn't exist.


Is the difference more clear now? In a morally complex story the Protagonist may suffer greatly or even die, but if the correct choice is made all will eventually be well. If the wrong choice is made, then a downward spiral begins.

As I said, I'm not advocating heroes who are good "just because" or villains who are evil "just because." I think that is too simplistic. Nobody is born pure, for good or evil. We are a product of our choices. At the large scale cosmic level there is absolute good and evil but as humans we sway back and forth between them because our short and finite existences make us incapable of perfection. No one is beyond corruption. No one is beyond redemption. But at any given moment we are moving towards one or towards the other.


Caveat: Yes some common choices, like what color of shirt to wear for example, are morally indifferent. But those kind of things are beside the point here.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

In all the stories that I have read, which I would classify as morally ambiguous, I don't know of a single one where there are not dire consequences for characters making the wrong choices. It may take some time before they get theirs but it happens nonetheless.

The biggest difference I see is where the character may make the right choice & still face dire consequences. That's life.... Sometimes life isn't fair.

 

[Mindfire]

In all the stories that I have read, which I would classify as morally ambiguous, I don't know of a single one where there are not dire consequences for characters making the wrong choices. It may take some time before they get theirs but it happens nonetheless.

The biggest difference I see is where the character may make the right choice & still face dire consequences. That's life.... Sometimes life isn't fair.

I think the biggest difference between "ambiguous" and "complex" now that I think about it is the existence of a standard. In a morally complex stories, even if the protagonist doesn't quite measure up or tries but can't quite reach it, the moral standard is still there. It is real and exists. In morally ambiguous stories there is no standard, an idea I'm very uncomfortable with.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Morally Ambiguous Story: Thoroughly human Protagonist is faced with an agonizingly difficult moral decision, but says "hand the hard work of sorting out the right thing to do here, I'll do as I please, morality be damned!" And then proceeds to pillage and rape and maybe give bread to orphans once in a while, but mostly pillage and rape. And (here's the key) the story/author is 100% okay with this. There are no consequences. No punishments for evil deeds, and certainly no rewards for good ones, though there might be punishments for those naive enough to put in some effort and figure out what the right thing to do is. Choices don't have consequences. There is only the whim of chance. Everyone's equally right because "right" doesn't exist.

It's clear that you don't like stories with amoral characters who do as they please, morality be damned, and never suffer consequences for it. That's your prerogative, and that's fine; but that isn't the same thing as "morally ambiguous."

Moral ambiguity usually means that characters' morality is -- wait for it -- ambiguous. As in "not clearly defined." It does not mean they have no moral framework; it does not mean they always do as they please without considering the consequences.

Han Solo is morally ambiguous. (At first, anyway.) Spike. Jayne Cobb. Tyrion Lannister. Wolverine. Rorschach. Jesse Custer. Hell, Holden Caulfield is morally ambiguous. Milo Minderbinder. Jay Gatsby.

Morally ambiguous characters don't exist in a world where everyone's equally right; they're just characters who don't fall into easy categories. If you want to apply a little D&D-style alignment theory, they're the Neutral characters (on the Good-Evil axis, not the Lawful-Chaotic axis). It seems like mostly what you're decrying is badly-written stories, not moral ambiguity.

 

[Frog]

Morally Complex Story: ......whatever choice you make there are direct consequences.

Morally Ambiguous Story: .....Choices don't have consequences.

I gotta say, I agree with Mr. Clayborne on this one. That's not a question of moral complexity or ambiguity. That's just a choice between good writing and bad writing. Even if you're dealing with a totally amoral character, their choices still need to have consequences of some form. If you hang a choice on the wall in the first chapter, then by the second or third chapter it must absolutely have a consequence. If it doesn't have a consequence, it shouldn't be there.

But since we're talking about consequences, let me throw a hypothetical situation out there:

Protagonist is a doctor in a hospital. Protagonist has, at this very moment in time, a number of different patients. These patients need a new heart, a new liver, new lungs, and two patients need new kidneys. Into Protagonist's ER, there comes a man who has suffered some mild head trauma. He needs to be monitored, but he is otherwise perfectly healthy. He is also blood type O-negative, and a compatible donor with all of the above patients. What does Protagonist do?

This is the classic example of where the obviously "good" moral choice has a negative consequence. Few people will look at this situation and say "kill the healthy patient to save the other five people." Why? Because it is terrifying for us to think of a world in which, at any moment, we can become a parts stock for other people.

But look at the scenario from another angle: this doctor has the chance to save five lives for the price of one. Isn't that a net gain? If he murders his healthy patient, doesn't he get a positive consequence? Five people get life. Isn't that worth something?

There's negative consequences too, don't get me wrong. He could be criminally charged, lose his medical license, be hunted down by a mad relative of the healthy patient. My point is this; I think things get more interesting and more realistic when there are both positive and negative consequences for any given choice.

But I stand by my statement that a simple good-v-evil story can still be a fun read.