What Would Drive a Character To Torture Their Enemy

Hello. I am new to this forum.
A character's nature might allow them to torture if they are unfeeling or if they believe the burden of compassion doesn't apply to their particular victim. A god torturing humans might not see any problem with their actions, for instance. Prejudice might permit torture, too. That is just what I think.

 

That's a good and complicated question. Torture could be a line over which most readers wouldn't follow the protagonist, but I guess that depends who the protagonist is. The Punisher could probably get away with it. Batman has employed torture as well. Then again, the Terminator went around shooting people in the knees and that was mostly played for laughs. How did you, the viewer, feel about the hero doing that?

I think it might be good for torture to have a lot of weight. It can be good to leave the reader wondering if they're ok with what happened. There's useful ambiguity built into the issue.

Tl;dr: Maybe. If it's handled well. I wrote too much. I apologize.

 

Revenge is a possible motive.

Torturing your enemies is not a typical hero/good guy trait, and I think that it would make some readers uncomfortable because heroes/good guys are generally put on a pedestal of do no evil and be super righteous and all that. Where if a villain did the exact same thing, it is perfectly fine because they are the bad guy. That doesn't make too much sense to me, but that seems to be the way people think. Personally, I don't have a problem with it. Depending on how the readers feel about the character and what the character's moral code is so far will decide whether or not they will tolerate it.

I hope that makes sense.

 

Not that I know better than anyone else, but I'd say that as long as his personality in the rest of the story comports with his behavior in the would-be torture scene, then most audiences will keep following. Basically, as long as it's earned and doesn't seem like a sudden huge departure from character with no repercussions. He sounds like a dangerous person with some moral ambiguity to him, if I understand correctly. If he were squeaky clean and continued to be so after nearly torturing someone, then readers might be upset. I guess some people don't even want to read about torture anyway, which may be understandable. But some of those people might not want to read about The Bloody One and his unnaturally powerful bloodlust anyway. Basically, in my opinion it sounds like what you have works. I'd read it without qualms.

 

Some reasons I could think of...not necessarily an attempt to explain why the example character would...

Because its was the plan. The boss said make it take a while and bring back proof.

Temporary insanity, or temporary loss of better judgement

To see how they get out of it (I think the joker employed this a bit).

Demonic Possession, or just being a demon type creature instead.

For deterrence, making an example out of one to stave off having to do it to others.

Because its just. If Vladd the impaller had been captured, might not some have seen fit to impale him?

Because there is no better alternative. I dont want to kill you, but I cant just let you go...

Because it establishes who is in control.

Because they want to see if its effective.

To teach a lesson.

To create a reputation.

Because they like it....

In the case of your anti-hero. I think your scene does the job. They wrestled with it, and got to look a little across the line, but were talked out of it, and saw the better choice. Seems to work for me.

 

Very deep despair and desperation I'd say, unless it's already something the character would do. Most people as a general rule are pretty averse to hurting and killing others. A character driven to kill in self-defense isn't that hard of a push because it's instinct to defend yourself, and they could reasonably get used to it over time and repetition. Sneak killing or sniping, or any other situation where they kill someone who hasn't done anything and is unaware of them demands more detachment, it's probably not something a character who has never killed another human(oid) could do, unless they've hunted or defended their farm/cattle, etc, then maybe they can associate it with that and not really think of it as killing someone.

Torture on the other hand, is prolonged and purposeful infliction of suffering, it's not something you do in one action (or at least pretty quickly) like killing, you have to actively do it for a while, and it's up close and personal. It can't be instinct or detached by thinking of it like shooting rabbits or coyotes, you have to really want to do it. Plus as someone else pointed out, it doesn't really work, so unless you do a little break from realism and make it reliable it's really more of a just-for-fun thing a villain or a really angry anti-hero would do.

 

I would say depending on the genre of your artist products.
In the fantasy world, the torture might be a demon work an madness.
In the realistic world, the character wants information from their enemies or to display of force to the public.

 

A personal grudge for sure. Also, I guess it depends on if you're character is "good", "bad" or morally ambiguous. Also if they think it for the good of the better whole, that might be a motivating factor.

 

This may be true, but it is presupposing the common knowledge of the characters in a story. I don't think this has been widely regarded as true during much of history. Its not required that it is effective, only that the character believes it will be. And I would question a statement like this, like all things it likely has varying degrees of success, and sometimes may be the right tool for the right scenario.

 

I don't think people realize just how easy it is to cross that line. All that is needed are the right stressors.

A guy I know told me that he had been having a mad month, work trouble, money trouble, and family trouble. One day he came home and his nieces dog that he was watching had dug up all the plants he had planted the week before. He told me he grabbed the dog, pushed it's nose into the dirt and hit it a few times, and again in another spot where it dug. He said there was no thinking, just anger, like he was watching from behind his own eyes. Kind of like he wasn't doing, wasn't in control. He said it was like all that stress, all those worries, confusion, fear, everything snapped together and became anger that he had no control over. Everything else vanished leaving only anger and it felt liberating not having to feel all those other emotions all jumbled together in a mass of confusion and fear. As soon as he stepped back he told me all he could feel was shame, shame that lasted for the next 3 days. The worst part was he knew it wasn't the dogs fault, he knew he needed to put a fence up, and that if he had it wouldn't have happened. But that it was nice for one second to have all those emotions directed at something else. But he told me that he was glad that happened, he had never dreamed it possible to do such a thing, like most of us only bad people do such things and he never saw himself as a bad person. He realized that he was just as capable of doing terrible things as true monsters, of becoming a monster. He said, "don't ever think your incapable of purposefully hurting someone. Understand that, and do everything you can to make sure you never get to that point."

See I know this guy, and he is a decent well educated all around good guy. I would never have expected him to do such a thing. I think the ability to hurt others is within all of us and much easier than people want to admit to themselves. So all that being said I don't think it unreasonable for a character to torture someone if they feel overwhelmed by everything, it takes very little to tip the balance into anger. Once there it takes a truly great person to not let anger control them.

 

Culture.

There are any number of cultures both in the past and even still today for whom torture was/is just fine and anyone unwilling to use it was unlikely to be in charge.

Of course, presenting torture as culturally OK (by a protagonist) to a modern readership would be a challenge.

 

Since I didn't see it mentioned, faith in a cause or belief in the righteousness of their action. That could make a 'Good' character do something like torture but you'd have to have quite an extensive setup to make it work. Along the lines of 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions', the good character would have to have some kind of moral descent to the point where torture because of a belief would work; otherwise, as mentioned above, readers will reject the idea.

Could make for a fun redemption arc though, getting to the point and then stepping back from the metaphorical precipice.