fictional violence essay

Don Winslow: The Complicated Ethics of Writing Violence in Fiction

There are some hard ethical questions in the writing of crime fiction.

For me, the most difficult one is how to portray violence.

For one thing, should you depict it all?

And if so, how do you do it with some sense of morality?

I wrestle with this issue all the time. It’s a fine line to walk. On the one hand I don’t want to sanitize violence—I don’t like presenting murder as a parlor game, or worse, a video game in which there are no real consequences. On the other hand, I don’t want to cross that thin line into what might be called the pornography of violence, a means to merely titillate the worst angels of our nature.

But we have to deal with it.

After all, we write crime fiction, and crime often involves violence. So either we choose crimes that don’t—the slick, bloodless heist, the clever con game—or we write scenes that involve shootings, stabbings and various kinds of murder.

And maybe that’s the answer—maybe we have come to a time when we should stop writing violent crime altogether. But if we make that choice, we say goodbye to the murder mystery, the procedural, the forensic novel.

And maybe I’m wrong about not sanitizing the violence. There is, after all, a place for the cleverly plotted, suspenseful whodunit with its witty dialogue, exotic locales, and intriguing characters. (Who am I to judge?) It’s fine, as long as we know it’s a game and we play by its rules and know its conventions. So if Colonel Someone kills Lord Someone Else in the study with a monkey wrench, we don’t expect to see the blood and brains and we don’t feel much from the grieving family except anticipation of the will.

Fair enough, I suppose.

But I write realistic crime fiction.

For twenty-three years, I wrote close-to-the-bone novels about the Mexican drug cartels. The actual violence was horrific, and I was faced with a stark choice: Do I back away from the violence, soften it, mute it, make it less terrible than it was, or do I bring it to the reader in realistic, graphic language that showed it the way it was?

For the most part, I chose the latter option.

It was hard choice.

Just researching these events was a brutal experience, and I knew that reading about them in these terms would be likewise brutal. But every violent incident in those books actually happened in one form or another , and I wanted the reader to understand the real tragedy of the so-called War On Drugs, I wanted the reader to feel the suffering of the people involved, comprehend the consequences of the violence.

If you’ve ever seen a gunshot wound, ever talked the family of a murder victim, ever gone to the funeral, you there is nothing sanitized or antiseptic about violence.

It is not the beautifully lit, slow-motion ballet seen in many films, nor the glittering, pounding action on the video screen.

It is ugly, it is dirty, it is heartbreaking.

But does that mean we should burden the reader with all that?

Not necessarily. Many readers of crime fiction go to books for an escape from reality, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a legitimate choice on both the writers and reader’s part. I’ve made that choice myself, in pieces that were never meant to depict real events.

I felt a different responsibility in writing realistic novels about the drug cartels. I wanted to get behind the headlines, to bring the reader into a close relationship with individuals instead of stereotypes, so that when one of them was killed – as so many were – the reader felt something.

But the question still remained—how far do you take it, how graphic do you want to be, where is that thin line?

At times I did back away from it. There were some incidents in the drug wars that I knew for a fact happened that were so horrific as to be surreal. I didn’t think the reader would even believe them. But, in all candor, the larger reason I didn’t was that just couldn’t bring myself to write them. I just couldn’t do it to the reader—or to myself.

Did that violate my precept of wanting readers to feel the effects of the drug wars? Yes, I suppose so, but at some point, enough is enough—how much pain do you want to inflict?

Not that much.

There is also the real danger of inuring the reader to violence, by repetition or escalation desensitizing the reader – the actual opposite of what I intended.

It can happen—researching those books I often spent days looking at atrocity photos and videos. The first one I saw was sickening, the thirtieth…was just depressing. (I always made an effort to put names to the victims, it was the most I could do to not be a simple voyeur.) But trying to convey those images on the page, to be accurate, realistic and truthful without being merely obscene was an ethical dilemma. I went back and forth on whether I should do it all and then decided that I had to because it was the truth and people needed to know the truth.

I hope I was right.

I became aware of the phenomenon of desensitizing the reader about halfway through writing the second book, The Cartel , which depicted an extraordinarily violent era. More and more, I stopped depicting the scene of violence itself, but had a character come upon the scene and react to it. That way, I got the emotional and psychological consequences of the violence, which I think is the more important value. I think it also made it easier for the reader to relate in real human terms—we can all understand grief, revulsion and anger.

There were still times when the story required that I write the actual violence, but I started more to write the funeral, the wake, the feelings of the survivors., the effects over the course of years. Maybe I’ve just softened over time myself, I don’t know.

I do know that when I was on tour for those drug books, there was not a single event at which someone didn’t come up to me who had lost a relative, a loved one, a friend in the drug wars. Or someone’s who had lost someone to an overdose. A few even asked me if I could tell them something about a missing family member. When that happens, over and over again, you feel a keen responsibility to the people that you write about, even if they are fictional.

I became more careful about how I wrote the violence, knowing that while I could still be realistic, what I must never be is glib.

Maybe our ethical responsibility lies in depicting the results of violence, the real human pain of the victims and their loved ones. In spending time with cops, writing a book called The Force , I learned, for instance, that a homicide detective’s primary relationship in a crime is not with the criminal but with the victim and the surviving family, and that they feel it intently and forever. I once sat with a retired detective and watched tears stream down his face as he told me about the killing of a child that happened thirty years before.

I didn’t write about that murder. Couldn’t do it—not to myself, the reader, that detective, or that child. I wrote around it, in an elliptical reference to a police officer’s past and what haunted him.

That felt fair, that felt right.

And I think it was effective, because it was human feeling that I was after. I wanted the reader to understand the cop.

And maybe that’s our guide. Maybe we have to feel our way to the right approach, case by case, consult our own humanity in deciding how far to take things, how graphic we can be without violating that humanity.

Again, it’s hard not to cross that invisible line.

I find that I use fewer words these days to describe violence, that I try to make small images stand in for large ones, symbolic ones for graphic ones. I find myself cutting more in the editing, while adding more lyrical sequences in the remembrance of a violent event.

I’m still realistic, but perhaps in a different way.

How do we ethically portray violence in crime fiction?

I wish I had all the answers, but I certainly don’t. Perhaps one answer is that we write what we think is necessary and then make sure that we also write the consequences. Maybe we just try to be human, aware of other humans, their experiences and their emotions.

And maybe that’s what being ethical is.

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The Ethics of Writing About Violence: A Roundtable Discussion

It’s funny how whole generations—millions of people—are connected by historical events: wars, assassinations, murders, television sitcoms, films and, of course, acts of terrorism.

It’s funny how whole generations—millions of people—are connected by historical events: wars, assassinations, murders, television sitcoms, films and, of course, acts of terrorism. Americans born in the early to mid-1970s, for example, are connected by images of a crumbling Berlin Wall, two Gulf wars, 9/11 and the grotesque digital photos of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The writers involved in this conversation are all part of that generation, and, as you will see, they are all searching for ways to tell stories about how their own lives intersect with these events in the hope that they will be able to gain some insight into the unwieldy themes of violence and suffering.

This discussion, which took place by email, was inspired by our collective interest in not turning away from the violence close at hand in our own neighborhoods or far away across oceans, but engaging it head-on. As young writers, our ethics and the aesthetics governing how we write about violence are influenced as much by genre-defining books like “Hiroshima” and “In Cold Blood” as by films like the “Rocky” series and Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs”

and “Pulp Fiction.”Through this conversation, we wanted to try to drive the subject of writing about violence—and the anxieties we feel while writing about it—into a corner and see if we could find some common ground, some code of ethics to write by. —David Griffith

Bradley: In August of 2001, I was attacked by a mentally ill young man in the parking lot of my apartment building. I didn’t know he was mentally ill at the time—I thought he was just drunk and aggressive. He asked for a cigarette, I didn’t have one, and he proceeded to beat me.

After he ran off and I began to come to, I realized my neighbors across the street had watched without intervening or trying to get help. It was all so jarring, and when I first tried to write about the experience, it was an attempt to understand why someone could be so brutal and why others could be so callous.The work might have had some therapeutic value, but it had no literary value at that point—it was too self- pitying and pedantic.

In 2003, during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, I was bothered by much of the rhetoric in support of the war that was thrown around by the likes of Sean Hannity,Toby Keith and many politicians. Here were a bunch of guys who had an 8-year-old boy’s excitement over violence—this idea that America was going to be “tough” and that there was virtue to be found in killing when the killing was justified. The thing that got to me, really, was so many people seemed so happy to be going to war. Even as I was disgusted, I felt as if I understood this thinking. I used to be an 8-year-old boy, after all, and I remember Rocky Balboa defeating Ivan Drago and turning the Russians to his side—by the end, the Soviet boxing enthusiasts were on their feet, chanting “Rocky! Rocky!” “Rocky IV” was my favorite movie as a kid precisely because I believed in the idea that properly applied violence could make the world a better place. “I fight so that you don’t have to fight,” Rocky told Rocky, Jr.That was surely what Ronald Reagan meant when he talked about “peace through strength.” I believed in that.

So I started writing what I thought was going to be my “‘Rocky IV’ essay” but discovered, after I got into it, that I remembered other stuff, too: In particular, how, a few days after watching the movie, I beat the hell out of my younger brother while the other kids from my neighborhood cheered me on. I had no reason to beat him up; I just felt as if it would be cool to do so. I’m not saying watching “Rocky IV” turns kids violent, but I know that, in my imagination, I was the hero in that battle—even though I was the aggressor.

Writing that scene caused me to go back and revisit the mugging. I realized these were two pieces of the same essay—an essay in which I could indict myself a little bit, too, as someone who had once believed violence could be pretty awesome.

Recently, I went back to the essay, “Force,” and found that, while I still like the “Rocky IV” and mugging segments, I don’t feel like the essay quite holds together the way it should. I thought I was indicting myself alongside the supporters of the war, but upon reflection, I think I make the argument that an interest in violence and domination is a childish thing that some of us (liberal professor- essayist types) outgrow whereas the less enlightened wallow in their brutal immaturity. It’s not quite that explicit, but the suggestion is there. And I think that’s wrong and dishonest.

Cowser: William, the distinction you draw between writing about violence done to us directly and violence to which we bear witness was the subject of my book “Green Fields,” in which I explore how far the ripples from a death-blow (in the case I wrote about, the stabbing and strangulation of a little girl I knew, but also the blows her likely murderer suffered at his father’s hand) might extend, whether I might plausibly claim the events had “happened” to me.

I was affected by an old speech in which Robert F. Kennedy refers to “the violence of institutions”—ignorance, inaction, intolerance, poverty. I wanted to write about those violences in my book, too, in an attempt to understand the murder as the tragic expression of unmet needs, as the “equal and opposite” reaction to a kind of violence perhaps harder for us to see. Like the man who attacked you, my friend’s killer suffered from mental illness. I realized it was impossible to write about violence without writing about suffering. Of course, my friend suffered, but so did her family (their suffering continues, even beyond the execution of her killer and perhaps even extended by my book). So did the murderer and his family. So did our tiny community, for that matter. I felt a responsibility to wedge all that suffering in there, to get as much in as the book could hold.

Church: I was thinking about “Green Fields,” Bob, and other books on the same shelf for me, books like Didion’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” or Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” and about how violence is intimately connected to place, a part of the character of the landscape.This seems to be a running obsession for me, maybe for all of us, whether it’s the large-scale, apocalyptic sort of violence of nuclear war and tornadoes that I talk about in “The Day After the Day After: My Atomic Angst,” or the public and political violence that you address, Dave, in “Good War,” or the more intimate and local sort of violence that each of you address in your works. It was, honestly, probably easier for me to talk about violence mediated through a movie, to be able to use the movie’s imagery as my own violent imagery and simply retell it.

I’m also interested in places and stories about places where the violence seems to contradict the character of the place. I think this is why “In Cold Blood” completely destroyed me.The book sucked me in, captivated me, unsettled and terrified me as few other books have (also Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven” and Dave Cullen’s “Columbine”). For me, the scene of the Clutter murders is some of the most haunting and gut-wrenching narrative nonfiction ever written. What’s interesting to me, though, is how Capote casts the Clutters in a kind of mythic, idyllic light.

They’re almost caricatures, perfectly posed pictures of innocence and hubris, love and sadness, the American Dream cast in sepia-toned nostalgia against the backdrop of Kansas.This casting not only insulates the reader from the real horror of the senseless murders but also allows Capote to cast the killers in a similarly mythic light, as if they are evil incarnate, the real godless violence and injustice of the world unleashed on the unsuspecting, innocent lambs, which, in turn, allows the book to be as much about violence writ large as it is about the specific violence of the actual murders or the actual place. When I taught this book, many of my students said it felt campy, like true crime novels or a “48 Hours” TV special, and in some sense, they were right. I had to argue with them that, while that may seem true now, this kind of storytelling didn’t fully exist before Capote.True crime, as a genre of fiction or nonfiction, or some hybrid TV version of the two, owes its life to “In Cold Blood” and the kind of techniques that Capote employed on the page in that book.

Bradley: It occurs to me that at least three of us (Steve, Dave and I) talk about movie violence in some of our work—Steve’s got “Red Dawn,” Dave’s got “Pulp Fiction,” I’ve got “Rocky IV.”

I wonder if that’s significant at all: When it comes to writing about violence, three out of four nonfiction writers “go to the movies.” How do we use movies to explore our own thoughts about violence? We all wind up criticizing these films’ depictions of violence, but I feel like we also acknowledge that once upon a time, we thought these movies were awesome. Is it fair to say movies played a role in developing our attitudes toward violence and, perhaps, our writing on the issue is a kind of corrective, a more nuanced approach to a subject that was handled kind of irresponsibly by the pop culture we consumed during our childhoods and college years? As thoughtful, reflective writers, are we sometimes embarrassed by the fact we used to watch ninja movies and then practice our flying kicks in the backyard?

Cowser: An experiment I conduct in my intro to nonfiction writing class is to have students watch a scene from the adaptation of “This Boy’s Life” in which Dwight (De Niro) confronts Toby (DiCaprio) about having taken the car out for a joyride and then pounds him for having done so. When I play the scene, students in the front row jump back, aghast at Dwight’s brutality (the fact that I don’t must say something about my desensitization).

Then, I have them read Wolff’s description in the memoir, which begins with the wonderful simile of Dwight presuming “like a mime acting out relaxation.” It’s a “blow by blow” account, but it’s much less “cinematic” than the film version. (Duh, right?) If you’ve ever witnessed a real street fight, you know how absolutely uncinematic they are. Wolff’s version manages some interiority and even humor that’s probably impossible in the movie. For instance, he writes that when Dwight first lunges,Toby thinks the man is after the sandwich he’s eating.

Tarantino-esque movie violence is cool in a way that real violence never is. I can watch “Reservoir Dogs,” but if I turn on an ultimate fighting match, I have to watch it in the picture-in-picture screen. Without that literal compartmentalization, the real violence of a bloodsport like the UFC is too disturbing for me.

I understand what your students are saying, Steven, about Capote, and as our written depictions of violence evolve, I guess I’m pushing my students toward the realest evocations possible. I refer often to Kim Stafford’s advice for writing about difficult material: Look directly at it and proceed slowly with great care.

Griffith: William, I do think of my writing about “Pulp Fiction” as a “corrective,” but more as a self-corrective. The banal violence in films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” lost its savor for me post-Abu Ghraib. As I discuss in my book, Abu Ghraib caused me to re-evaluate the way I relate to violence as an audience member and the way I relate to it as subject matter for writing.

I came of age as a writer while watching Tarantino’s films—probably a lot of writers of our generation did—but I had never sat down and thought about how his aesthetic might have influenced me. It helped me to compare the violence in “Pulp Fiction” to that of “The Godfather,” “The Exorcist,” and Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” three films I come back to over and over. What I discovered was that, at least for me,Tarantino’s brand of violence did not hold up, and I think it has something to do with his worldview, his artistic vision. For him, steeped in a mix of samurai and B-grade slasher flicks, violence is a means to an end. Period. It’s a way of life, a way of returning things to their proper balance. And while that’s “real”—that’s how life is for some people; that’s largely America’s foreign policy—it’s also a way that cuts off other possibilities. (That’s how we get cycles of violence.)

So while I wouldn’t necessarily say anyone was being “irresponsible” by anointing Tarantino one of the great directors of his generation, I would say his films, if unthinkingly consumed, contribute to the sense, which William alludes to, that “might makes right.” What I decided post-Abu Ghraib—and really, it didn’t quite sink in all the way until after my book was published and I started giving readings and talking to readers about it—was that the way I approached violence as a subject matter was geared toward what peace studies scholars call “interrupting” cycles of violence.

Church: But back to Bob’s point about looking directly at the violence.This, I think, is why I’ve had trouble writing successfully about the use of rock music as torture. I found a list of songs that have been used by the U.S. military to torture detainees at facilities around the world, many of them in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I wanted to write an essay, a kind of annotated “hit list.” Many of the songs would be on my “all time favorites” list—songs that were important to me as an adolescent and even as an adult, songs that offered me a different version of my own life or of the life around me. To think about someone being tortured with these songs, to read quotes from torturers talking about the psychological effects of metal music on a prisoner, had the effect of completely changing my hearing of this music. Metallica’s “And Justice for All,” an album I dearly loved, that’s largely about environmental pollution, social justice and mental illness, no longer lived in the nostalgic glow of my youth, no longer conjured up memories of my beat-up RX-7, my Kenwood stereo and the Lawrence High School parking lot. Instead, there were images of detainees being tortured not just by Metallica but by the “Sesame Street” theme song, Barney, AC/DC and Don McLean’s “American Pie.” I didn’t know how to approach it. Instead of looking directly at the acts of torture, instead of doing more research into how it was done or into the kind of psychological violence done by prolonged exposure to loud rock music, or even into the reasons our country chooses to employ such tactics or how they choose specific songs, I found myself instead recreating the nostalgic glow, hoping that by juxtaposing it against random floating quotes from various sources, a hodgepodge of fragmented information, I could make some comment about the danger of nostalgia, about how it insulates us from the truth of the power of music, or of art, to do both good and evil. It didn’t work. The essay sucks.

Griffith: Bob, you said you’re pushing your students “toward the realest evocations possible.” What is the “realest” in this case, or in cases like this? Does that mean a particular emotional truth about what violence does to a person? Does this mean trying to capture the jarring, unhinging (or maybe even banal, as seems the case with the onlookers in William’s assault) experience of witnessing violence? I mean, why describe violence at all?

Bradley: One of the things I really wanted people to understand about my own assault was that it wasn’t anything like what you’d expect. I’d seen people get in fights before, but the mugging was different. If two guys in a bar are getting aggressive, the violence itself is prefaced by lots of talk and posturing. I don’t imagine anyone has ever been involved in a bar fight and wondered, “Whoa! What’s happening?” the way I did when my attacker started punching me. I don’t think my attacker was any bigger than I am; physically, I could probably have defended myself. But by the time I processed what was happening, I was already on the ground and bleeding profusely and too weak to do much of anything except call for help.

When my friends found out what happened, they were sad and angry. And, if memory serves, every guy I knew said something to the effect of, “Man, I wish I’d been there. We would have fucked that guy up.” What I couldn’t seem to make them understand was that … well, no, we probably wouldn’t have. Of course, if I’d been with a friend that night, the attack likely wouldn’t have happened. But if it had, I think most people would have reacted the same way I did—with stunned disbelief. Maybe, eventually, the friend in question would have realized what was going on and tried to get the attacker off me. But it wouldn’t have been a righteous ass-whupping.

So, for me, the “realest” way to approach violence is to acknowledge that it’s confusing and surprising and upsetting, not glorious or heroic or something sensible men can seriously bond over with each other, despite what our culture sometimes tells us.

One of the things I wrestled with when I first started writing about the attack was that I couldn’t reconcile what had happened to me with my belief that people are generally well-intentioned and that Manichean divisions suggesting that some people are “good” and some “evil” are ultimately wrong-headed.Yet, some people enjoy inflicting pain on others. So, when I write about violence now, that’s what I’m interested in exploring—why is this the case? how can people be so cruel?

My students frequently chafe at the central argument of Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Hating” because they don’t want to admit they find hating pleasurable. To their credit, they know hatred is destructive, but I feel as if our culture encourages them to delude themselves into thinking they’ve transcended their own occasional hatefulness. I’d kind of like to write an essay titled “On the Pleasure of Fantasizing About Pounding the Unholy Hell out of Some Jerk Who Really Has It Coming.” Because, really, deep down, don’t we all know that feeling? It’s a ridiculous fantasy, of course, like the one shared by my friends, who wished they’d been there when I was mugged so they could’ve “had my back.” But I think it’s one a lot of us tend to indulge—in our heads, not in our lives—from time to time.

Griffith: Speaking of “indulging,” where’s the line between “poetic license” and “exploitation”?

Bradley: I do feel like I have certain responsibilities to my subjects and to my readers. First and foremost, I feel obligated to tell the truth as I understand it. Manipulating facts or memories in service to an agenda— even an agenda as noble as the creation of art—starts me on a path I don’t want to go down. I’m the son of a newspaperman, so maybe it was just drummed into me at an early age, but I guess I feel that if I’m writing about real people, there are real consequences. Furthermore, I feel that if I start manipulating facts about people and their experiences—in a sense, reinventing their stories—I’m doing them a disservice and, well, exploiting them.

I’m not arrogant enough to say what I’ve just typed above is the absolute, capital-T Truth that all nonfiction writers should follow. I’m more concerned with how I approach my writing and less interested in telling Dave, Steve and Bob how to approach their own.

Griffith: My own experience with these issues revolves around a number of the essays in my new manuscript, “Pyramid Scheme.” The first chapter, “Underworld,” which was published in The Normal School, meditates on the brutal murder of four homeless men, whose bodies were found a mere three to four blocks from our house in South Bend, Ind. I won’t go into all the details, but though I felt deeply compelled to write about this, I knew their story was not mine and I had to find a way to write about my reaction to the killings that would be compelling to others, which is to say not sentimental and cloying. My decision was to write in as honest a way as possible about my concerns and about why the deaths affected me so deeply. I drove around the area where the men were found and took photographs. I watched the papers. I monitored the conversation on the Web; I blogged about my feelings.Then something strange happened: A friend of one of the murdered men contacted me. Having read my blog posts, he mailed me to say he had information and needed to talk with me. The police had the details wrong. He gave me the names (street names) of some possible suspects. I was stunned and even a little frightened. I called the police and told them what had happened. It felt like I was playing with fire—scary, yet exhilarating.

A few days later, a reporter from the local paper showed up on my doorstep. She had used my blog posts to triangulate where we lived. She wanted an interview.

So, long story short, I had become tangled in the story. I hadn’t intended on this happening, but looking back now, I see I was doing everything I could to insinuate myself into it. I still have misgivings about the essay. Did I co-opt the deaths of those men for my own gain?

church: While some nonfiction writers out there want to believe nonfiction writing can exist in a moral vacuum, my own experience doesn’t support this. We can’t escape it.The moral risk is part of what makes nonfiction so exciting and artistic, and to argue that morality or ethics don’t apply to it actually seems to harm the genre, to make it more precious and irrelevant, like a shiny bauble on a shelf in the academy.

Some years ago, we lived in a cabin in a canyon in the foothills of Colorado and mostly hated it. We hated the weather, hated the isolation, hated the darkness and the narrow gap of sky. And while we were living there, a 20-year-old woman was pulled over late one night, in the nearby town, by a young man posing as a police officer. He abducted her, sexually assaulted her, killed her and then disposed of her body about a mile from our house. I’ve tried writing about this and mostly failed.

I tell my students that as nonfiction writers, we are basically parasites who feed off the lives of those around us, but that we should always strive to be ethical and efficient parasites. It’s a joke. But it’s also sort of true.When I tried to write about this violent act, about the violent place where we lived—a family walk in hunting season meant taking your life into your hands; we all had blaze- orange stocking caps—I realized it was mostly about me, about my perception of the place, about my own obsessions and conflicted feelings. It was a self- indulgent, essayistic meditation, and I felt quite insecure about using this crime, this young woman’s death, for my own ends. I didn’t know her; I’d only watched her mother on television talking about her daughter. I didn’t know the accused, either. But the entire community was captivated by the crime, and the news coverage was intense. It changed the way people behaved, the way they thought about the place. Crimes like this didn’t happen there. Or they did, and nobody wanted to believe it. And the more I thought about it, and the more I worked on the essay, the more I felt like, no matter how much research I did to get the facts right, to tell the story as close to the truth as possible, I was perhaps as much or more consumed with questions of writing craft, with the artistry of the piece. Sure, I asked myself if it was ethical for me to retell the events of the girl’s death, to craft a narrative from the facts, but I also asked myself how I should do it for the essay. I wondered if I could do it efficiently and effectively, if I could do it well and make it artful enough that I would earn the right to write about it. I was (and still am) very much troubled by the idea of victimizing this young woman or her family again in any way.

Another way to look at it is through the lens of ethical theory. I tell my students you can either be a utilitarian consequentialist, who rejects absolutism and believes the greatest good is created by the greatest art, or you can be a Kantian deontologist, who believes you may never use another person as a means to your own artistic ends, but that most nonfiction writers I know fall somewhere in between the two fundamentalist poles. Most of us are both utilitarian and absolutist in our writing, I think, and it seems a bit disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

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Violence in Fiction: 6 Archetypes

Naturally, this becomes a complex subject. To avoid violence in fiction altogether is impractical, if for no other reason than the fictive world soon ceases to be an accurate representation of reality. And yet, fiction is not only informed  by  reality, it also informs reality. Therefore, it behooves any writer using any level of violence in fiction to do so with awareness of its true implications, not just as part of a moral discussion, but also within the needs of the plot.

Today, I’m happy to share with you another thoughtful post from Usvaldo de Leon, Jr. A few years ago, I asked him to write a post based on an email conversation we had shared about the often dehumanizing portrayal of mindless violence in fiction. Today, he’s back with a breakdown of how violence functions in modern fiction and how to recognize certain archetypes of violence that might be showing up in your stories, so you can portray them with as much awareness and power as necessary.

In “real life,” violence is held in abeyance. It is a demon trapped in a bottle, and care must be considered before the bottle is broken; sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. For this reason, we are socialized against using it. We are taught to bury our violent impulses. “He made me so mad I could hit him,” we say, but we won’t. Once, as children, we smacked anyone who displeased us. Over time we learned to restrain ourselves.

However, an impulse repressed does not equal an impulse removed and therefore we employ and even enjoy violence in our stories. “Apology accepted, Captain Needa,” Vader says, and the incompetent underling collapses lifeless while our inner five-year-old nods admiringly.

What are we responding to when we watch violent stories? Are there archetypes of violent stories that we can use as writers? Can we respect violence as a plot element?

6 Ways Violence in Fiction Is Used Today

1. plot device.

The primary use of violence in fiction is as a plot device and intensifier, like using a spice. Obi-Wan does not have to die in Star Wars : he could be arrested, for example. He could be called away suddenly by Yoda. Either choice forces Luke to grow up. But his death adds spice—it livens up the scene.

Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), 20th Century Fox.

2. Plot Mover

Violence moves the story along. In The Maltese Falcon , the death of Sam Spade’s partner propels him into the mystery.

The Maltese Falcon (1941), Warner Bros.

3. Third Plot Point Symbolism

And, of course, what would the “all is lost moment” be without the death of a character? This moment symbolizes death, and storytellers love to make it literal.

Violence is used to communicate the stakes. In Escape From New York , Snake Plisken has twenty-four hours to find the President before tiny explosives in the blood vessels leading to his brain will explode.

Escape From New York (1981), AVCO Embassy Pictures.

If Luke doesn’t stop the Death Star, it will destroy the Rebel base, dooming the galaxy to the Evil Empire.

In Kill Bill Vol. 1 , to face her nemesis O Ren Ishii, The Bride must first kill O Ren’s personal army of 88 sword wielding yakuza assassins.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003), Miramax Films.

5. Conflict

Violence can also be used for conflict. In The Graduate , to rescue Elaine from her wedding, Benjamin Braddock literally has to fight off the wedding party and guests like they were a zombie horde. If everyone had calmly discussed the situation in order to resolve it peacefully, well, where’s the fun in that?

The Graduate (1967), Embassy Pictures.

6. Catharsis

Finally, violence in story can be a release. The characters are not bound by social conventions; if someone is preventing them from achieving their goal, they are free to do them bodily harm. As audience members, we are often pleased to witness others do things we would not allow ourselves to do. In High Fidelity , when the insufferable Ian Raymond steals Rob Gordon’s girlfriend, he lashes out, dispensing the beat down the character so richly deserves for a satisfying laugh for the audience.

High Fidelity (2000), Touchstone Pictures.

3 Polarities of Violence in Fiction

Violence in story occupies three axes:

1. Authorized or Unauthorized

Authorization refers to the role of the character. A police officer is authorized to use violence in the course of duty; so, too, in a different way, is a mob hitman.

2. Justified or Unjustified

Justification refers to just that: was the killer justified in the use of violence? In a typical story, the violence deployed by the main character will be justified and that of the antagonist will be unjustified, but not always. In Red River , for example, Thomas Dunson is never justified in his violence and it is a crucial clue for how the story develops.

Red River (1948), United Artists.

3. Orderly or Chaotic

Order or chaos refers to how the violence affects the story world. When the policeman in a story shoots the serial killer, that is restoring order. When the Joker in The Dark Knight Rises plants bombs on two ferries and tells them to blow each other up, it is an attempt to devolve Gotham to a base chaotic state.

6 Archetypes of Violence

Using this system, we can identify six possible archetypes through which violence in fiction may portrayed. Let us look at each of the archetypes.

Archetype #1: The Policeman (Justified/Authorized/Orderly)

The Policeman is most concerned with order. When chaos is introduced into the story world, it is the Policeman’s job to restore order to the world. In Dirty Harry , chaos is a serial killer stalking the streets of San Francisco.

However, the desire for order is not limited to law enforcement. In Batman Begins the Policeman is Ra’s Al Ghul. Consider that the League Of Shadows has acted as a check on human corruption and decadence for centuries. Therefore, the actions Ra’s takes are “authorized.” Gotham is depicted as a city collapsing under its own corruption, making these actions are “justified.” The end of Gotham will allow a better, cleaner city to arise. Therefore the actions are “orderly.”

Batman Begins (2005), Warner Bros.

Archetype #2: The Avenger (Justified/Unauthorized/Orderly)

The Avenger is most concerned with justification. For example, the bad guy has murdered someone close to the Avenger, and the Avenger has the ability to settle the score, returning to a semblance of “order.” The only difference between the Policeman and the Avenger is that one is “authorized” and the other is “unauthorized.”

These archetypes are slippery. It is possible for someone to begin a story as a Policeman and then to lose their authorization, turning into an Avenger. Beverly Hills Cop is one such story. Axel Foley is literally a Policeman, but when Foley’s friend is murdered, Foley’s captain will not sanction an investigation. Foley heads west to his friend’s home area as an Avenger.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Paramount Pictures.

Archetype #3: The Outlaw (Justified/Unauthorized/Chaotic)

The Outlaw is not interested in returning the world to its previous state. They are most most concerned with chaos. They seek to push the limits of the world—to change it. In Batman Begins , it is Batman who is the Outlaw, fighting the brutal order Ra’s Al Ghul seeks to impose.

Archetype #4: The Warrior (Justified/Authorized/Chaotic)

The Warrior seeks to destroy until the enemy is subdued or wiped out. The deliberate act of total war in this way is naturally chaotic, as it is impossible to know what the ultimate outcome will be. As the name implies, this archetype is most often seen in war films. In the eponymously named film, John Wick starts as an Avenger, seeking revenge for his poor dog. However by the end of the first film, his scope has expanded, and he intends to destroy Viggo’s entire criminal outfit. Devolving from Avenger to Warrior is a standard story beat, as also seen in the original Get Carter and The Road to Perdition.

John Wick (2014), Summit Entertainment.

Archetype #5: The Criminal (Unjustified/Unauthorized/Orderly)

The Criminal preys upon the order of the world because it is stable, predictable, and profitable. The Criminal may be on the wrong side of the line, so to speak, but they have a vested interest in preserving that line. Danny Ocean in Ocean’s 11 is a typical Criminal: if he has done his job properly, it will be as if he was never there. Any violence the Criminal engages in will be the minimum necessary to achieve the job. Heat is about a crew of professional thieves who would just as soon not be violent if possible, but when violence is necessary are ruthless in executing it.

Ocean’s 11 (2001), Warner Bros.

Archetype #6: The Anarchist (Unjustified/Unauthorized/Chaotic)

The Anarchist has no interest in anything but chaos. As Alfred says about The Joker in The Dark Knight , “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” The Anarchist is unauthorized, unjustified, and chaotic, and that makes them singularly terrifying because it is impossible to know exactly what they might do or why.

Thoughts on How and When to Use Violence in Fiction

Violence in fiction is much like the wind blowing: the impact is not so much from the incident itself but the reaction to it. The weight of the scene is created not by the violence but by the reaction to the violence.

Humans are by nature empathy machines. As such, when someone suffers, our inclination is to suffer with them. In The Thin Red Line , when Sergeant Keck accidentally explodes a grenade, the scene becomes excruciating as he becomes weepy and delirious and calling out to his mother.

The Thin Red Line (1998), 20th Century Fox.

On the other hand, when the good guy frequently just mows down seemingly hundreds of faceless baddies , who barely get a half second for us to acknowledge their passing, this signals that the deaths are unimportant. By its very lack of importance, this suggests the violence is unnecessary. If the use of violence in fiction is enhance your story, it must be seen as necessary, even inevitable, much as The Graduate could not end without a fight.

Violence is a significant element in fiction, and its cathartic properties frequently make it necessary for a story to feel complete. But use it wisely like salt in cooking to enhance your story. Be careful not to oversalt the story and make it unappetizing.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Which of these archetypes have you used to portray violence in fiction? Tell me in the comments!

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Usvaldo de Leon, Jr., is a screenwriter who lives in Tucson, Arizona. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for his screenplay Let Us Hold Hands and Sing Folk Songs . Most of these statements are true (Usvaldo is so obviously a fake name).

Interesting essay. I agree violence should be used thoughtfully in writing, and frankly there’s way too much entertainment where it’s served up like cotton candy. Honestly, I think the main use of violence, particularly early in a piece, is to define character. I was not entertained by Vader’s killing of the general; I took this as a sign he was evil. It’s almost step one of creating a stock antagonist – have them exercise unnecessary violence. There are tons of exception, but what’s relatively rare is for a character to process the impact of their violence. That’s impossible for a stock villain, because he’d stop being “stock,” but even most good guys aren’t particularly reflective. Does Luke ever worry about those he’ll kill? No, it’s not that type of story. So, end the end, violence informs both theme and character.

When violence is deployed, as you say, like “cotton candy”, it’s impact is diluted. And yes, seeing a character take stock of the violence they’ve seen/perpetrated is underutilized.

Hi Andy, I had a similar experience with that Star Wars scene. I thought it made Darth scary. I thought if he would do that to one of his people, what wouldn’t he do? I was a kid when I saw it—seven or something, and lived in a home infected with violence. I’m wondering if you were also a kid and/or had any brushes with violence prior to seeing the film?

Interestingly enough, my hero (who was a real-life person) went from being a criminal to being a warrior fighting for his country.

I can see that transition! It makes perfect sense to me.

Ah, this reminds me of the axis of Law and Chaos / Good and Evil in the Dungeons and Dragons games (at least the original Baldur’s Gate / Icewind Dale / Neverwinter Nights series). Chaotic Good was coded as a Robin Hood-type who will waylay the evil baron’s tax collectors. The evil baron is oppressing the people and bleeding them dry when not outright robbing them.

But this hinged on the Robin Hood stopping the highway robbers if the rightful king is present and NOT milking the peasants of tax money. A Hermione Granger who normally follows the rules until the rightful headmaster is overthrown, and the evil usurper must be resisted. Whereas Lawful Good would enforce the law either way; they’d just be unhappy working for the evil baron.

For me a bad guy who is Archetype 6 is difficult to write, because it’s too easy for “I want to watch the world burn” to be a cop out. I liked how Babylon 5 had the Shadows at least believe they were pruning and culling weaknesses in assorted species by starting chaotic wars and conflicts. My favorite type of [fictional] tyrant is the kind CS Lewis warned about, who “oppress you for your own good.” They have a discernible motive, which makes it possible to strategize against them.

To me Archetype 6 as a corporeal villain forecloses all possibility of negotiation, because they are unreasonable and predatory. Like a savage animal, they are chastised only via pain [violence]. I picture them failing the gom jabbar test of a Bene Gesserit. I can also see a hero break bad if they treat every opponent as an Archetype 6. I specify corporeal, because a monster / demon suits that archetype in a way that makes sense to me while still challenging the hero. For me, anyway.

Yes, I don’t think I could write an archetype 6 because I find them difficult to understand.

I think the trick to writing a good Anarchist, is showing how they have rationalized their beliefs/ideals at least with themselves. While “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” doesn’t make sense to most people, convincing the audience the Anarchist believes this is the only solution to the problem will create an interesting and somewhat appealing character. Tyler Durden from “Fight Club” comes to mind as the best example of a well-written Anarchist archetypes.

Fight Club is a tremendous story. What I love about it is that Durden seems appealing in the first half and then takes those ideals to a terrifying end. It’s a great sleight of hand trick and as you say a great example of the Anarchist.

I love these kinds of characters. My main character starts out an Anarchist, but he thinks he’s an Outlaw. How he uses his backstory to justify his unjustifiable actions is what interests me about his character. I don’t know if this would work for a whole book (he arcs out of Anarchy pretty quick), but it creates lots of external and internal conflict to delve into.

Yeah, Heather, an MC who was an anarchist the entire time would certainly be a challenge to accomplish, lol. Good luck with your story!

I also saw the D&D alignment connection and thought it interesting how they added a new axis to distinguished between a social authority and moral authority.

Regarding Archetype 6, one of reasons I liked The Dark Knight’s version was because of how they subverted the stereotypical villain origin story and made it clear that the events that might have led up to his world view didn’t matter. There are no neat, easy-breezy answers here. He’s not a person to be related to or reasoned with but a force of nature that has to be dealt with. He’s a purely thematic force.

As refreshing as that was, however, I also appreciate the painful Warrior–>Avenger–>descent into Anarchy arc when it is done well. (As Lucas ultimately *tried* to do with the Anakin to Darth Vader arc.)

I hadn’t thought about Anakin’s arc in that way, wow…

Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Usvaldo!

And thank you too!

Ooops- Here’s what I’d hoped would post before I hit the wrong key: It’s almost becoming expected for me, that when I receive your latest postings, it’s what I most need to learn. I’m there in my current wip, and now have some added ‘punch’ if you will, to spice up this portion. I can now call my protagonist an “Avenger” type 2 – as he brings order back and in so doing, creates a catharsis for the situation and another main character! Sincere thanks once again. I’m back to my keyboard now, need to decide if the bad guy is merely knocked down, or…out. Regards, Curt

Hi Curt, I’m glad that you found this useful! One thing that just occurred to me reading your comment: what happens to the avenger once there is nothing to be avenged? Good luck with your story.

Hi Again Usvaldo. This avenger will no doubt find another good cause to defend! Thanks for asking & Good luck to you also.

Thank you for having me!

#7 Natural Catastrophe (Unjustified/Inunauthorizable/Chaotic)? I couldn’t find a name for #8 which would be unjustified, authorized and orderly

So I had to grid this out to make sure I got this, lol. Yes, there are 8 combinations. The two I didn’t mention would be Authorized/Unjustified/Orderly and Authorized/Unjustified/Chaotic. The first I consider to be an oxymoron – there is no way for a person authorized to act violently to do so in an unjustified manner and have the result be orderly. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I don’t see it as possible. On the other hand, Authorized/Unjustified/Chaotic is possible and I believe this would be a shadow archetype of a policeman: the Bad Cop, if you will. A show like The Shield comes to mind as one exploring that. A natural catastrophe, unauthorized/unjustified/chaotic, that would be an anarchic situation and probably unpleasant to boot, lol.

I identify Authorized/Unjustifed/Orderly with The Assassin. Maintains the status quo, works in a precise and organized fashion, and is sanctioned by the tyrannical powers-that-be.

I can see that, sure. Makes sense.

I like the Assassin as Unjustified, Authorised and Orderly. I think the 8th one (Unjustified, Authorised and Chaos) could be the Dictator/Cult Leader, who authorise themselves and set to create a new ‘order’ which is usually only looks like order on the surface.

Makes total sense to me! What the dictator perceives as order is usually just fear, which is inherently a chaotic state.

I can also see this as a good definition of the inhuman impersonal institutionalized injustice story. Sorry, but that’s just how the system works.

Reminiscent of The Trial by Kafka, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Kesey or even Catch 22 by Heller.

Authorized/Unjustified/Orderly would be the Tyrant archetype? Evil Stepmother or Hitler…

Violence that is authorized, unjustified and also orderly does seem like the actions of a tyrant, yes.

Authorised/Unjustified/Orderly would be a maverick policeman type – think “Demolition Man”, perhaps – in which the violence is authorised and meant to restore order, but frequently taken too far. Unleash this hero only when desperate!

Authorised/Unjustified/Chaotic would be the deranged psychopath given licence to fight a bigger evil. Like the maverick above, their violence would be taken too far, but they’d revel in the chaos it causes. “Suicide Squad” is a possible example here, and there’s an argument for “Deadpool” as well.

The Suicide Squad crew are a great example, lol. The last film was essentially a live action cartoon.

Interesting. In both of my current projects, the male characters are avengers and the female characters are outlaws. I guess the females are more motivated to change a status quo that stifles them. I noticed that the six archetypes don’t leave room for any Unjustified but Authorized behavior. What would those be? Some kind of dystopian government?

It seems to me that to be Authorized but Unjustified is a shadow archetype of the Policeman. To my mind, though, if someone authorized commits violence that is unjustified, they then lose their authorization. In Beverly Hills Cop, for example, at the beginning of the film he is arranging a buy and the crook steals the delivery truck. If Axel were to shoot the driver, that would be authorized. But when he is in Beverly Hills, none of his actions have any authorization. So I see the archetypes as essentially devolving one into the other. Axel was the policeman but devolves into the Avenger because his captain refuses to grant authorization.

Interesting. In both of my current projects, the male characters are avengers and the female characters are outlaws. I guess the females are more motivated to change a status quo that stifles them. I noticed that the six archetypes don’t leave room for any Unjustified but Authorized behavior. What would those be? Some kind of dystopian government (orderly) or a mercenary/assassin (chaotic)?

I was thinking The Brute (Unjustified/Authorized/Chaotic) for the character that uses violence whenever they want because they can, without any real agenda behind it. Basically, any Bully in any story you’ve ever read. On the flip side, the other missing archetype would be the Enforcer (Unjustified/Authorized/Orderly) using violence to meet an agenda even when it’s not really warranted. Many of the Star Wars/Imperial villains meet this persona. Just my thoughts.

Feel free to take my thoughts and use them best as you believe works for you. But I think The Enforcer as you term it IS justified. I’m thinking of a film like Killing Them Softly, where Brad Pitt is called in to find out who knocked over a card game and eliminate them. So for the characters of that world, Pitt’s presence is Authorized, Orderly and Justified; these goofs stole from the wrong people and an example needs to be made. However, if you want to look at it from a larger societal standpoint that murdering a thief cannot be justified that’s a valid viewpoint, sure. Now your point on The Brute is well taken; I’m reminded of Daniel Craig’s character in the Road to Perdition, who sows a very chaotic, unjustified path but under the protection of his father.

Cool essay! I feel people who have experienced violence tend to process fictional violence differently. I find it cathartic when it’s done well, as you said, with the reaction being shown, as opposed to mindless violence, which I can find triggering if I’m not on guard for it.

This is a great point!

As the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting approaches, I am thinking about writing a somewhat fictional-somewhat autobiographical story about it. (I had three sons at Columbine then; none hurt, but friends killed, and they knew the shooters.) One of the killers was, by all indications, an 18 YO psychopath; the other was an accomplish whose willingness to go along made it possible. A strange and powerful dynamic. The psychopathic one was clearly an Anarchist (per the model above), but I can’t make up my mind about the other half of the duo. Plus, the pursuit of fame–rather, infamy–played a role that sits alongside the archetypes described.

BTW, I’m still not sure I’m up to the story. It was a hard, hard time.

I chuckle now at my mistyping “accomplice” as “accomplish.”

Wow, this sounds like a heavy story, even after all this time. I would say that both boys are anarchists viewed from our POV: they are unauthorized/unjustified/chaotic. That’s simply how the violent actions happened. And of course it is awful, one of the darker days of American history. To me it feels like it was a turning point , a harbinger of foreboding. The one young man who was the leader was clearly nihilistic and the other bought into that world view. the pursuit of fame played a role – I know both the boys names, as do millions of others, no doubt. We are creatures of story and real life events like Columbine we want to turn into a story as much as possible. We want it to have a beginning, a middle and an end, much like how the commission Report on 9/11 is paced and structured like a story. Because we can understand a story, we can process it. Raw, tragic events that have little rhyme or reason, that arise and dissipate like a tornado, it’s very hard to live with that. But that is why, as mentioned, the anarchist archetype is so terrifying. I usually wish people good luck with their story but for you, instead, I think I will wish peace and closure for you, however you achieve that.

This is fantastic! It gives me a lot to think about as I finish out my fantasy series which ends with a war. While I think the conflict needs to be there because the overall theme I’m trying to convey, but maybe I need to go about presenting it differently.

Stories are symbolic and the battles characters back almost demand violence. If your story involves protagonists who are good facing antagonists who are evil, it would likely be unsatisfying if the two groups did not have a final conflict. In story, the things that we want to achieve are often things we have to literally fight for.

As theandyclark commented, don’t forget to have your characters take stock of what happens. The lack of any kind of acknowledgement or reckoning with the violence makes character seem flat. The scene with Woody Harrelson in The Thin Red Line starts off as kind of a comic beat- at first it feels a bit like a cartoon. But soon enough, as the character begins dying, it is his platoon mates reaction and their reassurances and words of comfort and empathy that give the death it’s full weight.

Good luck with your story!

Your post was most valuable–thank you. I needed to write a dueling scene for Book Two of my historical novel series. In truth, I never identified it as writing violence!–especially since I abhor it. My hero, who was justified, would win. My biggest concern was focused on not making it sound stiff and boring. My solution was to hire a fight choreographer, who with her incredible talent for changing/adding just the right words/actions brought the scene to life.

I’m glad that you found it useful! And what a clever idea to bring in a fight choreographer to make sure the action was gripping. If we need to have violence in our stories to symbolically resolve our differences, then let’s make sure it is not boring!

If I think about it there are three or maybe four types of violence in my current WIP. One is control of the working class, by class violence in both propaganda and the weilding of power via wealth i.e. the charity hospital maintains control by subjugation of the workers/ patients, if they do not conform health care is withdrawn the same with work if they do not perform or are unable to perform they lose their livelihood. Two violence by the antagonist out of greed. He and his sister have no compunction in murdering their father and planning to do the same to his subsequent heirs, including a child, in order to gain an inheritance. Three the inner anger of the protagonist, which grows with the injustice which pervades the society in which she lives, to the point of making the terrible decision to abort the foetus she is carrying. The fourth a violent rape by her ex-husband to satisfy his need for control. I totally agree that we are all capable of violent thought, provoked in many cases by anger about an injustice. It can be as simple as becoming annoyed by something that someone does, intentionally or unitentionally that provokes anger and a desire to get even. And it is a constant battle to control the desire to react in one way or another. Even though one might profess to be pacifist the automatic trigger of anger is always there. So to have violence in fiction is as you say unavoidable. How one treats it is crucial to the plot and needs to be consistant with the theme of the book.

“To have violence in fiction is unavoidable” This reminds me of the film Parasite, which has one of the best midpoint changes I’ve ever seen. I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it but suffice to say my immediate reaction was “Oh, you’re just going to have to kill them – because story is heightened and dramatized. No one can ever “agree to disagree” in a story; it’s zero sum and that will be expressed somehow violently.

I think you would profit from reading Jack Donovan´s essay “Violence is Golden”

I will, thank you! https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/2010/09/11/violence-is-golden/

I’m now approaching the end of my 100,000 word novel with scenes in the 1860’s and the 1970’s. There are two very different violent scenes that define my protagonists. The first portrays the violence of the “hornet’s nest at the 1862 battle of Shiloh, in which the hero miraculously survives. The second scene is in the 1970’s where the protagonist, a woman, is caught up in a torrent where in the flash flood she is saved at the last minute from near drowning and hypothermia. Both scenes are defining moments for both of my protagonists lives and has significant impact on other characters brought into the story subsequently. The events of the two centuries come together in the end. Thus, without these examples of violence my book would lose all impact. By-the-way, both of these scenes are based on real life happenings.

“Both scenes are defining moments for both of my protagonists lives and has significant impact on other characters” – when this is the case, we are using violence as a plot element wisely. Best of luck with your story!

I agree that violence is generally overused in some genres of storytelling, and that it should be used as responsibly as possible. I think a good example of violence being treated with some weight is surprisingly the original Japanese anime adaptation of Trigun. (Mild spoilers for that series ahead) While most of the violence is cartoony slapstick at first, it’s established that the main hero, Vash, is an idealistic pacifist who hates violence; thus, all the Wild West-style shootouts come from the villains who mistakenly think he’s dangerous. Vash never purposefully kills anyone until later in the series, and from what I remember, he laments every single life he takes, including those of villains. I don’t really know what violent archetype I would classify Vash as, if any of them. In fact, I think a lot of Japanese anime heroes defy common Western media hero archetypes (at least the ones for seinen/mature audiences; shonen/teen anime protagonists fit in pretty well). For most Western media, though, I think these violent archetypes you’ve presented are quite useful for classifying characters. Thanks for the post!

Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the contrasting viewpoint re: Eastern media depictions of violence.

Talking about violence in fiction, there are over 50 books involving school shootings. It’s almost become a subgenre.

I can’t imagine it, but for the new generation of writers, setting a book with a school shooting probably gives instant authenticity and a frisson of catharsis.

Interesting post! I see people have various label for the type of violence which is Unjustified / Authorized / Chaotic, and I think I’d named it as the Narcissist. The victim in a sense authorizes the narc by submitting to their power. Or The Abuser, whether that is an abuse of power or abuse within relationships.

What’s interesting is how they helps in designing the protagonist and antagonist, either as complete opposites on all axes, or just in one axis to make the difference between the two characters slight.

Another interesting thing is if you use Robert McKee’s four quadrant thematic square, you can separate the sides further by the type of violence they use.

Those ideas, to incorporate the violence into McKee or along axes are really fascinating! I’m glad you enjoyed the post.

A few years ago I had a chance to watch (most of) “John Wick” on the telly. I was struck by how much it resembled the anime series “Noir” in that the protagonist leaves the corpses of hordes of faceless baddies in his/her wake. Cartoon violence. That’s all it is. Oh, and “Kill Bill” as well. I chuckled through most of that film (skipped over the part where the bride was being abused). Yes, the public loves simulated violence, but we’re a notch above the ancient Romans who needed to see real bloody violence. But what can you expect from a people who felt the need to invent a word for “kill every tenth man”?

Yes, it does make one wonder what that society was like that they needed to view hand to hand combat for entertainment purposes.

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Article contents

Violence, media effects, and criminology.

• Nickie D. Phillips Nickie D. Phillips Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, St. Francis College
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.189
• Published online: 27 July 2017

Debate surrounding the impact of media representations on violence and crime has raged for decades and shows no sign of abating. Over the years, the targets of concern have shifted from film to comic books to television to video games, but the central questions remain the same. What is the relationship between popular media and audience emotions, attitudes, and behaviors? While media effects research covers a vast range of topics—from the study of its persuasive effects in advertising to its positive impact on emotions and behaviors—of particular interest to criminologists is the relationship between violence in popular media and real-life aggression and violence. Does media violence cause aggression and/or violence?

The study of media effects is informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives and spans many disciplines including communications and media studies, psychology, medicine, sociology, and criminology. Decades of research have amassed on the topic, yet there is no clear agreement about the impact of media or about which methodologies are most appropriate. Instead, there continues to be disagreement about whether media portrayals of violence are a serious problem and, if so, how society should respond.

Conflicting interpretations of research findings inform and shape public debate around media effects. Although there seems to be a consensus among scholars that exposure to media violence impacts aggression, there is less agreement around its potential impact on violence and criminal behavior. While a few criminologists focus on the phenomenon of copycat crimes, most rarely engage with whether media directly causes violence. Instead, they explore broader considerations of the relationship between media, popular culture, and society.

• media exposure
• criminal behavior
• popular culture
• media violence
• media and crime
• copycat crimes

Media Exposure, Violence, and Aggression

On Friday July 22, 2016 , a gunman killed nine people at a mall in Munich, Germany. The 18-year-old shooter was subsequently characterized by the media as being under psychiatric care and harboring at least two obsessions. One, an obsession with mass shootings, including that of Anders Breivik who ultimately killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 , and the other an obsession with video games. A Los Angeles, California, news report stated that the gunman was “an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including ‘Counter-Strike,’” while another headline similarly declared, “Munich gunman, a fan of violent video games, rampage killers, had planned attack for a year”(CNN Wire, 2016 ; Reuters, 2016 ). This high-profile incident was hardly the first to link popular culture to violent crime. Notably, in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine shooting massacre, for example, media sources implicated and later discredited music, video games, and a gothic aesthetic as causal factors of the crime (Cullen, 2009 ; Yamato, 2016 ). Other, more recent, incidents have echoed similar claims suggesting that popular culture has a nefarious influence on consumers.

Media violence and its impact on audiences are among the most researched and examined topics in communications studies (Hetsroni, 2007 ). Yet, debate over whether media violence causes aggression and violence persists, particularly in response to high-profile criminal incidents. Blaming video games, and other forms of media and popular culture, as contributing to violence is not a new phenomenon. However, interpreting media effects can be difficult because commenters often seem to indicate a grand consensus that understates more contradictory and nuanced interpretations of the data.

In fact, there is a consensus among many media researchers that media violence has an impact on aggression although its impact on violence is less clear. For example, in response to the shooting in Munich, Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology, avoided pinning the incident solely on video games, but in the process supported the assertion that video gameplay is linked to aggression. He stated,

While there isn’t complete consensus in any scientific field, a study we conducted showed more than 90% of pediatricians and about two-thirds of media researchers surveyed agreed that violent video games increase aggression in children. (Bushman, 2016 )

Others, too, have reached similar conclusions with regard to other media. In 2008 , psychologist John Murray summarized decades of research stating, “Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors” (Murray, 2008 , p. 1212). Scholars Glenn Sparks and Cheri Sparks similarly declared that,

Despite the fact that controversy still exists about the impact of media violence, the research results reveal a dominant and consistent pattern in favor of the notion that exposure to violent media images does increase the risk of aggressive behavior. (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 , p. 273)

In 2014 , psychologist Wayne Warburton more broadly concluded that the vast majority of studies have found “that exposure to violent media increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in the short and longterm, increases hostile perceptions and attitudes, and desensitizes individuals to violent content” (Warburton, 2014 , p. 64).

Criminologists, too, are sensitive to the impact of media exposure. For example, Jacqueline Helfgott summarized the research:

There have been over 1000 studies on the effects of TV and film violence over the past 40 years. Research on the influence of TV violence on aggression has consistently shown that TV violence increases aggression and social anxiety, cultivates a “mean view” of the world, and negatively impacts real-world behavior. (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 50)

In his book, Media Coverage of Crime and Criminal Justice , criminologist Matthew Robinson stated, “Studies of the impact of media on violence are crystal clear in their findings and implications for society” (Robinson, 2011 , p. 135). He cited studies on childhood exposure to violent media leading to aggressive behavior as evidence. In his pioneering book Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice , criminologist Ray Surette concurred that media violence is linked to aggression, but offered a nuanced interpretation. He stated,

a small to modest but genuine causal role for media violence regarding viewer aggression has been established for most beyond a reasonable doubt . . . There is certainly a connection between violent media and social aggression, but its strength and configuration is simply not known at this time. (Surette, 2011 , p. 68)

The uncertainties about the strength of the relationship and the lack of evidence linking media violence to real-world violence is often lost in the news media accounts of high-profile violent crimes.

Media Exposure and Copycat Crimes

While many scholars do seem to agree that there is evidence that media violence—whether that of film, TV, or video games—increases aggression, they disagree about its impact on violent or criminal behavior (Ferguson, 2014 ; Gunter, 2008 ; Helfgott, 2015 ; Reiner, 2002 ; Savage, 2008 ). Nonetheless, it is violent incidents that most often prompt speculation that media causes violence. More specifically, violence that appears to mimic portrayals of violent media tends to ignite controversy. For example, the idea that films contribute to violent crime is not a new assertion. Films such as A Clockwork Orange , Menace II Society , Set it Off , and Child’s Play 3 , have been linked to crimes and at least eight murders have been linked to Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers (Bracci, 2010 ; Brooks, 2002 ; PBS, n.d. ). Nonetheless, pinpointing a direct, causal relationship between media and violent crime remains elusive.

Criminologist Jacqueline Helfgott defined copycat crime as a “crime that is inspired by another crime” (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 51). The idea is that offenders model their behavior on media representations of violence whether real or fictional. One case, in particular, illustrated how popular culture, media, and criminal violence converge. On July 20, 2012 , James Holmes entered the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises , the third film in the massively successful Batman trilogy, in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. He shot and killed 12 people and wounded 70 others. At the time, the New York Times described the incident,

Witnesses told the police that Mr. Holmes said something to the effect of “I am the Joker,” according to a federal law enforcement official, and that his hair had been dyed or he was wearing a wig. Then, as people began to rise from their seats in confusion or anxiety, he began to shoot. The gunman paused at least once, several witnesses said, perhaps to reload, and continued firing. (Frosch & Johnson, 2012 ).

The dyed hair, Holme’s alleged comment, and that the incident occurred at a popular screening led many to speculate that the shooter was influenced by the earlier film in the trilogy and reignited debate around the impact about media violence. The Daily Mail pointed out that Holmes may have been motivated by a 25-year-old Batman comic in which a gunman opens fire in a movie theater—thus further suggesting the iconic villain served as motivation for the attack (Graham & Gallagher, 2012 ). Perceptions of the “Joker connection” fed into the notion that popular media has a direct causal influence on violent behavior even as press reports later indicated that Holmes had not, in fact, made reference to the Joker (Meyer, 2015 ).

A week after the Aurora shooting, the New York Daily News published an article detailing a “possible copycat” crime. A suspect was arrested in his Maryland home after making threatening phone calls to his workplace. The article reported that the suspect stated, “I am a [sic] joker” and “I’m going to load my guns and blow everybody up.” In their search, police found “a lethal arsenal of 25 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition” in the suspect’s home (McShane, 2012 ).

Though criminologists are generally skeptical that those who commit violent crimes are motivated solely by media violence, there does seem to be some evidence that media may be influential in shaping how some offenders commit crime. In his study of serious and violent juvenile offenders, criminologist Ray Surette found “about one out of three juveniles reports having considered a copycat crime and about one out of four reports actually having attempted one.” He concluded that “those juveniles who are self-reported copycats are significantly more likely to credit the media as both a general and personal influence.” Surette contended that though violent offenses garner the most media attention, copycat criminals are more likely to be career criminals and to commit property crimes rather than violent crimes (Surette, 2002 , pp. 56, 63; Surette 2011 ).

Discerning what crimes may be classified as copycat crimes is a challenge. Jacqueline Helfgott suggested they occur on a “continuum of influence.” On one end, she said, media plays a relatively minor role in being a “component of the modus operandi” of the offender, while on the other end, she said, “personality disordered media junkies” have difficulty distinguishing reality from violent fantasy. According to Helfgott, various factors such as individual characteristics, characteristics of media sources, relationship to media, demographic factors, and cultural factors are influential. Overall, scholars suggest that rather than pushing unsuspecting viewers to commit crimes, media more often influences how , rather than why, someone commits a crime (Helfgott, 2015 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ).

Given the public interest, there is relatively little research devoted to exactly what copycat crimes are and how they occur. Part of the problem of studying these types of crimes is the difficulty defining and measuring the concept. In an effort to clarify and empirically measure the phenomenon, Surette offered a scale that included seven indicators of copycat crimes. He used the following factors to identify copycat crimes: time order (media exposure must occur before the crime); time proximity (a five-year cut-off point of exposure); theme consistency (“a pattern of thought, feeling or behavior in the offender which closely parallels the media model”); scene specificity (mimicking a specific scene); repetitive viewing; self-editing (repeated viewing of single scene while “the balance of the film is ignored”); and offender statements and second-party statements indicating the influence of media. Findings demonstrated that cases are often prematurely, if not erroneously, labeled as “copycat.” Surette suggested that use of the scale offers a more precise way for researchers to objectively measure trends and frequency of copycat crimes (Surette, 2016 , p. 8).

Media Exposure and Violent Crimes

Overall, a causal link between media exposure and violent criminal behavior has yet to be validated, and most researchers steer clear of making such causal assumptions. Instead, many emphasize that media does not directly cause aggression and violence so much as operate as a risk factor among other variables (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 ; Warburton, 2014 ). In their review of media effects, Brad Bushman and psychologist Craig Anderson concluded,

In sum, extant research shows that media violence is a causal risk factor not only for mild forms of aggression but also for more serious forms of aggression, including violent criminal behavior. That does not mean that violent media exposure by itself will turn a normal child or adolescent who has few or no other risk factors into a violent criminal or a school shooter. Such extreme violence is rare, and tends to occur only when multiple risk factors converge in time, space, and within an individual. (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 , p. 1817)

Surette, however, argued that there is no clear linkage between media exposure and criminal behavior—violent or otherwise. In other words, a link between media violence and aggression does not necessarily mean that exposure to violent media causes violent (or nonviolent) criminal behavior. Though there are thousands of articles addressing media effects, many of these consist of reviews or commentary about prior research findings rather than original studies (Brown, 2007 ; Murray, 2008 ; Savage, 2008 ; Surette, 2011 ). Fewer, still, are studies that specifically measure media violence and criminal behavior (Gunter, 2008 ; Strasburger & Donnerstein, 2014 ). In their meta-analysis investigating the link between media violence and criminal aggression, scholars Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey did not find support for the assertion. Instead, they concluded,

The study of most consequence for violent crime policy actually found that exposure to media violence was significantly negatively related to violent crime rates at the aggregate level . . . It is plain to us that the relationship between exposure to violent media and serious violence has yet to be established. (Savage & Yancey, 2008 , p. 786)

Researchers continue to measure the impact of media violence among various forms of media and generally stop short of drawing a direct causal link in favor of more indirect effects. For example, one study examined the increase of gun violence in films over the years and concluded that violent scenes provide scripts for youth that justify gun violence that, in turn, may amplify aggression (Bushman, Jamieson, Weitz, & Romer, 2013 ). But others report contradictory findings. Patrick Markey and colleagues studied the relationship between rates of homicide and aggravated assault and gun violence in films from 1960–2012 and found that over the years, violent content in films increased while crime rates declined . After controlling for age shifts, poverty, education, incarceration rates, and economic inequality, the relationships remained statistically non-significant (Markey, French, & Markey, 2015 , p. 165). Psychologist Christopher Ferguson also failed to find a relationship between media violence in films and video games and violence (Ferguson, 2014 ).

Another study, by Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna, examined violent films from 1995–2004 and found decreases in violent crimes coincided with violent blockbuster movie attendance. Here, it was not the content that was alleged to impact crime rates, but instead what the authors called “voluntary incapacitation,” or the shifting of daily activities from that of potential criminal behavior to movie attendance. The authors concluded, “For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9% and 2.1%. Nonviolent movies have no statistically significant impact” (Dahl & DellaVigna, p. 39).

High-profile cases over the last several years have shifted public concern toward the perceived danger of video games, but research demonstrating a link between video games and criminal violence remains scant. The American Psychiatric Association declared that “research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression . . .” but stopped short of claiming that video games impact criminal violence. According to Breuer and colleagues, “While all of the available meta-analyses . . . found a relationship between aggression and the use of (violent) video games, the size and interpretation of this connection differ largely between these studies . . .” (APA, 2015 ; Breuer et al., 2015 ; DeCamp, 2015 ). Further, psychologists Patrick Markey, Charlotte Markey, and Juliana French conducted four time-series analyses investigating the relationship between video game habits and assault and homicide rates. The studies measured rates of violent crime, the annual and monthly video game sales, Internet searches for video game walkthroughs, and rates of violent crime occurring after the release dates of popular games. The results showed that there was no relationship between video game habits and rates of aggravated assault and homicide. Instead, there was some indication of decreases in crime (Markey, Markey, & French, 2015 ).

Another longitudinal study failed to find video games as a predictor of aggression, instead finding support for the “selection hypothesis”—that physically aggressive individuals (aged 14–17) were more likely to choose media content that contained violence than those slightly older, aged 18–21. Additionally, the researchers concluded,

that violent media do not have a substantial impact on aggressive personality or behavior, at least in the phases of late adolescence and early adulthood that we focused on. (Breuer, Vogelgesang, Quandt, & Festl, 2015 , p. 324)

Overall, the lack of a consistent finding demonstrating that media exposure causes violent crime may not be particularly surprising given that studies linking media exposure, aggression, and violence suffer from a host of general criticisms. By way of explanation, social theorist David Gauntlett maintained that researchers frequently employ problematic definitions of aggression and violence, questionable methodologies, rely too much on fictional violence, neglect the social meaning of violence, and assume the third-person effect—that is, assume that other, vulnerable people are impacted by media, but “we” are not (Ferguson & Dyck, 2012 ; Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Others, such as scholars Martin Barker and Julian Petley, flatly reject the notion that violent media exposure is a causal factor for aggression and/or violence. In their book Ill Effects , the authors stated instead that it is simply “stupid” to query about “what are the effects of [media] violence” without taking context into account (p. 2). They counter what they describe as moral campaigners who advance the idea that media violence causes violence. Instead, Barker and Petley argue that audiences interpret media violence in a variety of ways based on their histories, experiences, and knowledge, and as such, it makes little sense to claim media “cause” violence (Barker & Petley, 2001 ).

Given the seemingly inconclusive and contradictory findings regarding media effects research, to say that the debate can, at times, be contentious is an understatement. One article published in European Psychologist queried “Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?” and lamented that the debate had devolved into an ideological one (Elson & Ferguson, 2013 ). Another academic journal published a special issue devoted to video games and youth and included a transcript of exchanges between two scholars to demonstrate that a “peaceful debate” was, in fact, possible (Ferguson & Konijn, 2015 ).

Nonetheless, in this debate, the stakes are high and the policy consequences profound. After examining over 900 published articles, publication patterns, prominent authors and coauthors, and disciplinary interest in the topic, scholar James Anderson argued that prominent media effects scholars, whom he deems the “causationists,” had developed a cottage industry dependent on funding by agencies focused primarily on the negative effects of media on children. Anderson argued that such a focus presents media as a threat to family values and ultimately operates as a zero-sum game. As a result, attention and resources are diverted toward media and away from other priorities that are essential to understanding aggression such as social disadvantage, substance abuse, and parental conflict (Anderson, 2008 , p. 1276).

Theoretical Perspectives on Media Effects

Understanding how media may impact attitudes and behavior has been the focus of media and communications studies for decades. Numerous theoretical perspectives offer insight into how and to what extent the media impacts the audience. As scholar Jenny Kitzinger documented in 2004 , there are generally two ways to approach the study of media effects. One is to foreground the power of media. That is, to suggest that the media holds powerful sway over viewers. Another perspective is to foreground the power and heterogeneity of the audience and to recognize that it is comprised of active agents (Kitzinger, 2004 ).

The notion of an all-powerful media can be traced to the influence of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, in the 1930–1940s and proponents of the mass society theory. The institute was originally founded in Germany but later moved to the United States. Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes outlined how mass society theory assumed that members of the public were susceptible to media messages. This, theorists argued, was a result of rapidly changing social conditions and industrialization that produced isolated, impressionable individuals “cut adrift from kinship and organic ties and lacking moral cohesion” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 13). In this historical context, in the era of World War II, the impact of Nazi propaganda was particularly resonant. Here, the media was believed to exhibit a unidirectional flow, operating as a powerful force influencing the masses. The most useful metaphor for this perspective described the media as a “hypodermic syringe” that could “‘inject’ values, ideas and information directly into the passive receiver producing direct and unmediated ‘effects’” (Jewkes, 2015 , pp. 16, 34). Though the hypodermic syringe model seems simplistic today, the idea that the media is all-powerful continues to inform contemporary public discourse around media and violence.

Concern of the power of media captured the attention of researchers interested in its purported negative impact on children. In one of the earliest series of studies in the United States during the late 1920s–1930s, researchers attempted to quantitatively measure media effects with the Payne Fund Studies. For example, they investigated how film, a relatively new medium, impacted children’s attitudes and behaviors, including antisocial and violent behavior. At the time, the Payne Fund Studies’ findings fueled the notion that children were indeed negatively influenced by films. This prompted the film industry to adopt a self-imposed code regulating content (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 ; Surette, 2011 ). Not everyone agreed with the approach. In fact, the methodologies employed in the studies received much criticism, and ultimately, the movement was branded as a moral crusade to regulate film content. Scholars Garth Jowett, Ian Jarvie, and Kathryn Fuller wrote about the significance of the studies,

We have seen this same policy battle fought and refought over radio, television, rock and roll, music videos and video games. Their researchers looked to see if intuitive concerns could be given concrete, measurable expression in research. While they had partial success, as have all subsequent efforts, they also ran into intractable problems . . . Since that day, no way has yet been found to resolve the dilemma of cause and effect: do crime movies create more crime, or do the criminally inclined enjoy and perhaps imitate crime movies? (Jowett, Jarvie, & Fuller, 1996 , p. 12)

As the debate continued, more sophisticated theoretical perspectives emerged. Efforts to empirically measure the impact of media on aggression and violence continued, albeit with equivocal results. In the 1950s and 1960s, psychological behaviorism, or understanding psychological motivations through observable behavior, became a prominent lens through which to view the causal impact of media violence. This type of research was exemplified by Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll studies demonstrating that children exposed to aggressive behavior, either observed in real life or on film, behaved more aggressively than those in control groups who were not exposed to the behavior. The assumption derived was that children learn through exposure and imitate behavior (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963 ). Though influential, the Bandura experiments were nevertheless heavily criticized. Some argued the laboratory conditions under which children were exposed to media were not generalizable to real-life conditions. Others challenged the assumption that children absorb media content in an unsophisticated manner without being able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. In fact, later studies did find children to be more discerning consumers of media than popularly believed (Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Hugely influential in our understandings of human behavior, the concept of social learning has been at the core of more contemporary understandings of media effects. For example, scholar Christopher Ferguson noted that the General Aggression Model (GAM), rooted in social learning and cognitive theory, has for decades been a dominant model for understanding how media impacts aggression and violence. GAM is described as the idea that “aggression is learned by the activation and repetition of cognitive scripts coupled with the desensitization of emotional responses due to repeated exposure.” However, Ferguson noted that its usefulness has been debated and advocated for a paradigm shift (Ferguson, 2013 , pp. 65, 27; Krahé, 2014 ).

Though the methodologies of the Payne Fund Studies and Bandura studies were heavily criticized, concern over media effects continued to be tied to larger moral debates including the fear of moral decline and concern over the welfare of children. Most notably, in the 1950s, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham warned of the dangers of comic books, a hugely popular medium at the time, and their impact on juveniles. Based on anecdotes and his clinical experience with children, Wertham argued that images of graphic violence and sexual debauchery in comic books were linked to juvenile delinquency. Though he was far from the only critic of comic book content, his criticisms reached the masses and gained further notoriety with the publication of his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent . Wertham described the comic book content thusly,

The stories have a lot of crime and gunplay and, in addition, alluring advertisements of guns, some of them full-page and in bright colors, with four guns of various sizes and descriptions on a page . . . Here is the repetition of violence and sexiness which no Freud, Krafft-Ebing or Havelock Ellis ever dreamed could be offered to children, and in such profusion . . . I have come to the conclusion that this chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comic books, both their content and their alluring advertisements of knives and guns, are contributing factors to many children’s maladjustment. (Wertham, 1954 , p. 39)

Wertham’s work was instrumental in shaping public opinion and policies about the dangers of comic books. Concern about the impact of comics reached its apex in 1954 with the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Wertham testified before the committee, arguing that comics were a leading cause of juvenile delinquency. Ultimately, the protest of graphic content in comic books by various interest groups contributed to implementation of the publishers’ self-censorship code, the Comics Code Authority, which essentially designated select books that were deemed “safe” for children (Nyberg, 1998 ). The code remained in place for decades, though it was eventually relaxed and decades later phased out by the two most dominant publishers, DC and Marvel.

Wertham’s work, however influential in impacting the comic industry, was ultimately panned by academics. Although scholar Bart Beaty characterized Wertham’s position as more nuanced, if not progressive, than the mythology that followed him, Wertham was broadly dismissed as a moral reactionary (Beaty, 2005 ; Phillips & Strobl, 2013 ). The most damning criticism of Wertham’s work came decades later, from Carol Tilley’s examination of Wertham’s files. She concluded that in Seduction of the Innocent ,

Wertham manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence—especially that evidence he attributed to personal clinical research with young people—for rhetorical gain. (Tilley, 2012 , p. 386)

Tilley linked Wertham’s approach to that of the Frankfurt theorists who deemed popular culture a social threat and contended that Wertham was most interested in “cultural correction” rather than scientific inquiry (Tilley, 2012 , p. 404).

Over the decades, concern about the moral impact of media remained while theoretical and methodological approaches to media effects studies continued to evolve (Rich, Bickham, & Wartella, 2015 ). In what many consider a sophisticated development, theorists began to view the audience as more active and multifaceted than the mass society perspective allowed (Kitzinger, 2004 ). One perspective, based on a “uses and gratifications” model, assumes that rather than a passive audience being injected with values and information, a more active audience selects and “uses” media as a response to their needs and desires. Studies of uses and gratifications take into account how choice of media is influenced by one’s psychological and social circumstances. In this context, media provides a variety of functions for consumers who may engage with it for the purposes of gathering information, reducing boredom, seeking enjoyment, or facilitating communication (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973 ; Rubin, 2002 ). This approach differs from earlier views in that it privileges the perspective and agency of the audience.

Another approach, the cultivation theory, gained momentum among researchers in the 1970s and has been of particular interest to criminologists. It focuses on how television television viewing impacts viewers’ attitudes toward social reality. The theory was first introduced by communications scholar George Gerbner, who argued the importance of understanding messages that long-term viewers absorb. Rather than examine the effect of specific content within any given programming, cultivation theory,

looks at exposure to massive flows of messages over long periods of time. The cultivation process takes place in the interaction of the viewer with the message; neither the message nor the viewer are all-powerful. (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Singnorielli, & Shanahan, 2002 , p. 48)

In other words, he argued, television viewers are, over time, exposed to messages about the way the world works. As Gerbner and colleagues stated, “continued exposure to its messages is likely to reiterate, confirm, and nourish—that is, cultivate—its own values and perspectives” (p. 49).

One of the most well-known consequences of heavy media exposure is what Gerbner termed the “mean world” syndrome. He coined it based on studies that found that long-term exposure to media violence among heavy television viewers, “tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world” (p. 52). Inherent in Gerbner’s view was that media representations are separate and distinct entities from “real life.” That is, it is the distorted representations of crime and violence that cultivate the notion that the world is a dangerous place. In this context, Gerbner found that heavy television viewers are more likely to be fearful of crime and to overestimate their chances of being a victim of violence (Gerbner, 1994 ).

Though there is evidence in support of cultivation theory, the strength of the relationship between media exposure and fear of crime is inconclusive. This is in part due to the recognition that audience members are not homogenous. Instead, researchers have found that there are many factors that impact the cultivating process. This includes, but is not limited to, “class, race, gender, place of residence, and actual experience of crime” (Reiner, 2002 ; Sparks, 1992 ). Or, as Ted Chiricos and colleagues remarked in their study of crime news and fear of crime, “The issue is not whether media accounts of crime increase fear, but which audiences, with which experiences and interests, construct which meanings from the messages received” (Chiricos, Eschholz, & Gertz, p. 354).

Other researchers found that exposure to media violence creates a desensitizing effect, that is, that as viewers consume more violent media, they become less empathetic as well as psychologically and emotionally numb when confronted with actual violence (Bartholow, Bushman, & Sestir, 2006 ; Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007 ; Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973 ; Fanti, Vanman, Henrich, & Avraamides, 2009 ; Krahé et al., 2011 ). Other scholars such as Henry Giroux, however, point out that our contemporary culture is awash in violence and “everyone is infected.” From this perspective, the focus is not on certain individuals whose exposure to violent media leads to a desensitization of real-life violence, but rather on the notion that violence so permeates society that it has become normalized in ways that are divorced from ethical and moral implications. Giroux wrote,

While it would be wrong to suggest that the violence that saturates popular culture directly causes violence in the larger society, it is arguable that such violence serves not only to produce an insensitivity to real life violence but also functions to normalize violence as both a source of pleasure and as a practice for addressing social issues. When young people and others begin to believe that a world of extreme violence, vengeance, lawlessness, and revenge is the only world they inhabit, the culture and practice of real-life violence is more difficult to scrutinize, resist, and transform . . . (Giroux, 2015 )

For Giroux, the danger is that the normalization of violence has become a threat to democracy itself. In our culture of mass consumption shaped by neoliberal logics, depoliticized narratives of violence have become desired forms of entertainment and are presented in ways that express tolerance for some forms of violence while delegitimizing other forms of violence. In their book, Disposable Futures , Brad Evans and Henry Giroux argued that as the spectacle of violence perpetuates fear of inevitable catastrophe, it reinforces expansion of police powers, increased militarization and other forms of social control, and ultimately renders marginalized members of the populace disposable (Evans & Giroux, 2015 , p. 81).

Criminology and the “Media/Crime Nexus”

Most criminologists and sociologists who focus on media and crime are generally either dismissive of the notion that media violence directly causes violence or conclude that findings are more complex than traditional media effects models allow, preferring to focus attention on the impact of media violence on society rather than individual behavior (Carrabine, 2008 ; Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 ; Jewkes, 2015 ; Kitzinger, 2004 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ; Rafter, 2006 ; Sternheimer, 2003 ; Sternheimer 2013 ; Surette, 2011 ). Sociologist Karen Sternheimer forcefully declared “media culture is not the root cause of American social problems, not the Big Bad Wolf, as our ongoing public discussion would suggest” (Sternheimer, 2003 , p. 3). Sternheimer rejected the idea that media causes violence and argued that a false connection has been forged between media, popular culture, and violence. Like others critical of a singular focus on media, Sternheimer posited that overemphasis on the perceived dangers of media violence serves as a red herring that directs attention away from the actual causes of violence rooted in factors such as poverty, family violence, abuse, and economic inequalities (Sternheimer, 2003 , 2013 ). Similarly, in her Media and Crime text, Yvonne Jewkes stated that U.K. scholars tend to reject findings of a causal link because the studies are too reductionist; criminal behavior cannot be reduced to a single causal factor such as media consumption. Echoing Gauntlett’s critiques of media effects research, Jewkes stated that simplistic causal assumptions ignore “the wider context of a lifetime of meaning-making” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 17).

Although they most often reject a “violent media cause violence” relationship, criminologists do not dismiss the notion of media as influential. To the contrary, over the decades much criminological interest has focused on the construction of social problems, the ideological implications of media, and media’s potential impact on crime policies and social control. Eamonn Carrabine noted that the focus of concern is not whether media directly causes violence but on “how the media promote damaging stereotypes of social groups, especially the young, to uphold the status quo” (Carrabine, 2008 , p. 34). Theoretically, these foci have been traced to the influence of cultural and Marxist studies. For example, criminologists frequently focus on how social anxieties and class inequalities impact our understandings of the relationship between media violence and attitudes, values, and behaviors. Influential works in the 1970s, such as Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order by Stuart Hall et al. and Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics , shifted criminological critique toward understanding media as a hegemonic force that reinforces state power and social control (Brown, 2011 ; Carrabine, 2008 ; Cohen, 2005 ; Garland, 2008 ; Hall et al., 2013 /1973, 2013/1973 ). Since that time, moral panic has become a common framework applied to public discourse around a variety of social issues including road rage, child abuse, popular music, sex panics, and drug abuse among others.

Into the 21st century , advances in technology, including increased use of social media, shifted the ways that criminologists approach the study of media effects. Scholar Sheila Brown traced how research in criminology evolved from a focus on “media and crime” to what she calls the “media/crime nexus” that recognizes that “media experience is real experience” (Brown, 2011 , p. 413). In other words, many criminologists began to reject as fallacy what social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson deemed “digital dualism,” or the notion that we have an “online” existence that is separate and distinct from our “off-line” existence. Instead, we exist simultaneously both online and offline, an

augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online. It is wrong to say “IRL” [in real life] to mean offline: Facebook is real life. (Jurgenson, 2012 )

The changing media landscape has been of particular interest to cultural criminologists. Michelle Brown recognized the omnipresence of media as significant in terms of methodological preferences and urged a move away from a focus on causality and predictability toward a more fluid approach that embraces the complex, contemporary media-saturated social reality characterized by uncertainty and instability (Brown, 2007 ).

Cultural criminologists have indeed rejected direct, causal relationships in favor of the recognition that social meanings of aggression and violence are constantly in transition, flowing through the media landscape, where “bits of information reverberate and bend back on themselves, creating a fluid porosity of meaning that defines late-modern life, and the nature of crime and media within it.” In other words, there is no linear relationship between crime and its representation. Instead, crime is viewed as inseparable from the culture in which our everyday lives are constantly re-created in loops and spirals that “amplify, distort, and define the experience of crime and criminality itself” (Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 , pp. 154–155). As an example of this shift in understanding media effects, criminologist Majid Yar proposed that we consider how the transition from being primarily consumers to primarily producers of content may serve as a motivating mechanism for criminal behavior. Here, Yar is suggesting that the proliferation of user-generated content via media technologies such as social media (i.e., the desire “to be seen” and to manage self-presentation) has a criminogenic component worthy of criminological inquiry (Yar, 2012 ). Shifting attention toward the media/crime nexus and away from traditional media effects analyses opens possibilities for a deeper understanding of the ways that media remains an integral part of our everyday lives and inseparable from our understandings of and engagement with crime and violence.

Over the years, from films to comic books to television to video games to social media, concerns over media effects have shifted along with changing technologies. While there seems to be some consensus that exposure to violent media impacts aggression, there is little evidence showing its impact on violent or criminal behavior. Nonetheless, high-profile violent crimes continue to reignite public interest in media effects, particularly with regard to copycat crimes.

At times, academic debate around media effects remains contentious and one’s academic discipline informs the study and interpretation of media effects. Criminologists and sociologists are generally reluctant to attribute violence and criminal behavior directly to exposure to violence media. They are, however, not dismissive of the impact of media on attitudes, social policies, and social control as evidenced by the myriad of studies on moral panics and other research that addresses the relationship between media, social anxieties, gender, race, and class inequalities. Scholars who study media effects are also sensitive to the historical context of the debates and ways that moral concerns shape public policies. The self-regulating codes of the film industry and the comic book industry have led scholars to be wary of hyperbole and policy overreach in response to claims of media effects. Future research will continue to explore ways that changing technologies, including increasing use of social media, will impact our understandings and perceptions of crime as well as criminal behavior.

Further Reading

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The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud

• Published: 09 June 2022
• Volume 55 , pages 289–308, ( 2022 )

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• Christian Ferencz-Flatz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1277-2839 1  

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Ever since the 1960s, media and communication studies have abounded in heated debates concerning the psychological and social effects of fictional media violence. Massive empirical research has first tried to tie film violence to cultivating either fear or aggressive tendencies among its viewership, while later research has focused on other media as well (television, video games). The present paper does not aim to settle the factual question of whether or not medial experiences indeed engender real emotional dispositions. Instead, it brings into play the resources of genetic phenomenology in order to ask how the formation of such dispositions would be generally possible. Thus, it aims to further the discussion by overtly employing the framework of Husserl’s later genetic phenomenology to the field of emotional experience. By posing questions with regard to how fictional emotional experiences contribute to the formation of apperceptions and to the specificities of emotional sedimentation, it also points out some shortcomings in Husserl’s account by drawing from Freud’s dynamic theory of drives and emotions.

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Change history, 15 october 2022.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09585-w

Anderson & Bushman 2002 : 2377.

Huesmann & Malamuth 1986 and Bushman & Anderson 2015.

Ferguson 2009 ; see also Rios & Ferguson 2020 for a more recent take on a similar matter.

Barker & Petley 2001 : 2 f.

Summa 2019 .

Cavallaro 2019 .

See for an emphatic presentation of this argument Haneke 2010 : 575 f.

For a phenomenological account of dreaming inspired by Husserl see Geniusas 2021 and Ferencz-Flatz 2011 a.

See for this Welton 2003 and Ferencz-Flatz & Staiti 2018 .

Hua XI: 336; English translation: 624.

For some more recent attempts to read Freud phenomenologically in view of Husserl’s work see also Gyemant 2021 , Brudzińska 2019 and Lohmar & Brudzińska 2012 . For a direct attempt to link Freud to genetic phenomenology, see Nicolas Smith’ doctoral thesis, Smith 2010 .

EU: 331; English translation: 275.

EU: 335; English translation: 279.

EU: 336; English translation: 279. For a comparison between Husserl’s and Freud’s understanding of “unconscious consciousness,” see Bernet 2002 . For a more detailed account of Husserl’s (and Fink’s) interpretation of the unconscious, see also Geniusas 2020 . For a more general discussion of the parallels between the phenomenological and the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious, see also Legrand & Trigg 2017 , as well as Bodea & Popa 2020 .

For the latter, see also Ferencz-Flatz 2017 .

Hua III/1: 146; English translation: 158.

See, for instance, Schmitz 2011 : 29 f. as well as Schmitz 2003 : 43–54.

EU: 79; English translation: 76.

EU: 80; English translation: 77.

GW 10: 250f.; English translation: 148.

GW 10: 126 f., 250 and 275 f.

See for this especially Dwyer 2007 as well as the classical work on the subject matter by Elmar Holenstein, Holenstein 1972 : § 25 f.

Hua XXXIX: 411.

See especially Hua XXXIX: 423 f.

See for this especially Ferencz-Flatz 2012 .

Hua XI: 185; English translation: 235.

Mills 2004 : 674.

See for this especially Brudzińska 2019 : 174 f. and Kühn 2021 .

“Jeder Trieb ist ein Stück Aktivität.” (GW 10: 214).

See for this Ferencz-Flatz 2014 : 38 f.

GW 10: 256.

See also the famous passage in the Lectures on psychoanalysis : “This process would have been accompanied by a particular affect, and we now learn to our surprise that this affect accompanying the normal course of events is invariably replaced by anxiety after repression has occurred, no matter what its own quality may be. Thus, when we have a hysterical anxiety-state before us, its unconscious correlate may be an impulse of a similar character - anxiety, shame, embarrassment - or, just as easily, a positive libidinal excitation or a hostile aggressive one, such as rage or anger. Anxiety is therefore the universally current coinage for which any affective impulse is or can be exchanged if the ideational content attached to it is subjected to repression.“ (GW 11: 418 f.)

See, for instance, Dworkins 1981 .

For a more detailed account of “motivation” in Husserl, see especially Hua IV, § 56. See also Rang 1973 : 99–206; Mazzu 2007 and Ferencz-Flatz 2011 b.

See for this especially Hua IV, § 56 a-c.

Hua IV: 222 f.; English translation: 234.

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Ferencz-Flatz, C. The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud. Cont Philos Rev 55 , 289–308 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09573-0

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Violence Against Women: Where Fact Meets Fiction

Peace adzo medie on writing and researching gender violence in west africa.

For the past fourteen years, I have studied violence against women . While this form of violence is a global problem, I have focused my research on countries in Africa. This work has generated important insights that continue to inform both my fiction and non-fiction writing.

Nightbloom , my second novel, tells the story of Akorfa and Selasi, two cousins who start life as best friends in Ghana. Over time, a rift develops and deepens as the girls graduate from boarding school and Akorfa leaves to study medicine in the US. It is only when the cousins are reunited many years later that they begin to uncover the family secrets that helped drive them apart.

I began writing Nightbloom in 2018, as I was also finishing my academic text Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa . Naturally, violence against women, particularly sexual violence, was on my mind a lot. It soon became clear that it was a theme I wanted to explore in the novel—how and why it happens, how it affects the victims, and how the response by those closest to these victims can ameliorate or exacerbate the problem.

One objective of my research has been to understand the decisions that women make after experiencing sexual violence because understanding these decisions is key to creating institutions and norms that prevent violence and that serve and support victims. In Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, where I have worked the longest, I have interviewed over three-hundred people, including many survivors of sexual violence.

One of the first things I noted is that most people were deciding not to file police reports. This was not surprising; sexual violence is underreported in most countries around the world. However, I expected to hear that this underreporting was mostly caused by a distrust of the police. While the police were an issue, what mattered most for women was how their community would respond. They told me that the fear of being blamed, shamed, and stigmatized for what they had experienced was what really deterred them from disclosing sexual violence. In the cases where victims did receive support from relatives and friends, they often changed their mind and filed an official complaint.

It became clear to me as I conducted this study that survivors wanted to tell their story, and not only to relatives and friends. I had expected that, because of how traumatic it can be to recount the experience of sexual violence and its aftermath, interviewees would not want to say much to me. I ended up surprised at how generous survivors were with their time and how much they revealed to me. Many gave me a detailed account of the attack and explained how their life changed after. In Abidjan, B, a 24-year-old seamstress, described being tortured and raped by a male friend she was visiting. She initially decided not to tell anyone because she was afraid of being laughed at and blamed for going to his house. D, a 22-year-old hairdresser, was weighed down by the finger-pointing she endured in her neighborhood in Abidjan where people had begun to refer to her as “the girl they raped.” And though it was not easy for them, others told me of similar experiences.

My own perceptions shifted as time and again I witnessed their openness in a society where sexual violence is often shrouded in secrecy. Some survivors even found our conversations cathartic; there was a certain amount of relief in recounting the incident. Some had few people they could trust not to judge them. Furthermore, for many survivors, telling their story is a first step to getting justice and to healing. And sharing it with someone who listens and recognizes the gravity of their trauma signaled to them that they were not alone, that their story mattered, that they were not to blame, and had no reason to feel shame.

Knowing this, I felt it essential to highlight their words in my academic writing —to give them their own space on the page. While in my analysis I of course sought to identify commonalities across experiences and underlying factors that caused these experiences, I did not want to lose the individuality of their voices. I wove their quotes through the text, using them to illustrate my theoretical and analytical insights. I believed this device could better show the reader the devastating effect of this violence.

The need to highlight the words of survivors remained important as I wrote my novel, Nightbloom . Though the story and characters are fictional, it was vital to me to centre the voices of survivors of sexual violence and this shaped the way I thought about structure and form. Using multiple perspectives enabled me to show how this violence often goes unnoticed and how the silence—often enforced by those who should support the survivor to speak up—enables offenders. I was able to show how two survivors find a way to break through with their stories. But their words are far from identical. The ease with which they flow, the tones and rhythms, the depth and details provided, the resolution pursued, all demonstrate the complexity and tension that characterizes the experience of sexual violence.

For the most part, I enjoy the pure creativity of writing fiction. The chance to imagine and construct every aspect of the story. With Nightbloom , however, I knew that also meant I would have to write the act of sexual assault. I knew even before I began writing that it would be difficult to do. Spending so much of my time talking, thinking, and writing about violence had already taken so much of an emotional toll that when writing my first novel, His Only Wife , from 2012-2017, I had one rule: there would be no physical or sexual violence. But Akorfa, Selasi, and their story had lived loudly in my head for so many years that not writing the book had begun to feel like I was trying to stop a flood with my bare hands.

As expected, imagining an incident of sexual assault was painful; I grieved for my characters and what they suffered as I wrote. But unlike in my research, I had some control over the story. I exercised it by describing the act only briefly, giving the reader enough detail to understand what happened but not asking them to spend page after page reading about the assault. I instead made the reader a witness to life after, showing how a person survives, experiencing joy, love, success, loss, disappointment, and failure.

In Nightbloom I was able to give my characters so much life outside of the assault. But it is different in my research. Because the people I study are real, and because my conversations with them revolve around their experience of sexual assault such that even the high points of their stories are around the incident (e.g., the perpetrator being arrested and prosecuted), they are forever linked to this act of violence in my mind. I still have a vivid recollection of some of the conversations I have had over the years: the sadness in the eyes of survivors; the anger and disgust on the face of a woman who was raped as a teenager, as she described her attacker. Therefore, while I found a way to decenter the assault in fiction, it has been impossible to do so in my research. Interestingly, writing fiction is one way that I have dealt with these memories. Creating a world in which survivors have a degree of justice and happiness helps me to cope with the anger and sadness that I have experienced while conducting this study.

As a scholar, I seek to generate and share knowledge that contributes to changing norms, policy, and practice. As a novelist, I am interested in wielding words, voice, and structure to creatively tell stories. Nightbloom allowed me to marry my scholarship with my art. I can only hope that this work of imagination helps readers to better understand the real causes and effects of violence against women, and that this understanding will lead to action that makes a positive difference in girls’ and women’s lives.

__________________________________

Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie is available from Algonquin Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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Of fantasy and science fiction, edited by aidan moher.

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• Feature Article

“Has Fantasy Forgotten the Consequences of Violence?” by Adam Callaway

It got me to wondering why there aren’t more fantasy (or science fiction) novels that deal with issues outside of violence?

I’m working on an idea for a secondary world urban fantasy about a young man who enters a very opulent city looking to become a master chef. The story follows his journey through various culinary-related careers — farmer, butcher, fisherman, baker, patissier, commis — until he opens his own restaurant and becomes a known quantity within the city. Although it doesn’t even sound like it would need to be set in a fantasy city, I’m still making it a fantasy because I’m comfortable with fantasy and I also want to explore the magic in food. Outside of writing and reading, cooking is a passion of mine.

However, as I’ve been outlining and drafting this novel (working title: Stock ), it occurred to me that I was writing a fantasy novel with almost no violence (outside of a fistfight or two). The plot is resolved through hard work and cleverness. It got me to wondering why there aren’t more fantasy (or science fiction) novels that deal with issues outside of violence?

Searching the web, I found a few really interesting articles on violence, such as this one from Kotaku . A similar thread on creating non-violent narratives came up on the IGDA mailing list recently. Is it time that genre media diversifies into non-violent narratives as well?

Bioshock Infinite

Most of my favorite novels are violent: The Lies of Locke Lamora , The Gone Away World , The Book of the New Sun , This Book is Full of Spiders , Rumo , Harry Potter . Violence is a part of these worlds, and it’s handled in a respectful manner. Also: most of the violence in these books mean something. When someone dies in Locke Lamora or Harry Potter , it shatters the characters.

There are also a lot of novels I enjoy where violence is minimal or non-existent: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , The Alchemaster’s Apprentice , Desolation Road , The Bards of Bone Plain . The characters in these novels solve problems with their minds and not their magic swords. It opens up a whole new avenue of storytelling. But, I’m having a difficult time coming up with non-violent novels that aren’t humorous or middle grade. Going middle grade, there are all sorts of wonderful books that aren’t violent: Maniac McGee , Stargirl , Holes , Dancing Carl , Wayside School is Falling Down (a personal favorite of mine). However, these are all real world stories. Middle grade fantasy is also violent.

Violence is easy.

I don’t have a problem with violence in media. Growing up playing Doom , Quake , and Goldeneye gave me a high tolerance for stylized violence. I do have a problem with real(istic) violence, of the sort portrayed in Battlefield and Call of Duty, but not enough of a problem to forgo these titles altogether. Real world violence disturbs me greatly, whether it’s footage from a war zone or from a UFC fight. It makes me physically ill to see. With the former, I force myself to watch it. The recent tragedy at the Boston Marathon was very trying, but I monitored the coverage because I felt it was an important event.

But even with a near constant barrage of dismemberment, in book form, it’s still easy to skip over violence because we can choose not to visualize or acknowledge it.

Find a root of this media fetish for violence is difficult. Most major fantasy releases deal almost exclusively with violence it seems: A Song of Ice and Fire , The First Law , The Prince of Thorns , etc. But even with a near constant barrage of dismemberment, in book form, it’s still easy to skip over violence because we can choose not to visualize or acknowledge it. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgress works so well because Nadsat forces you to confront the shocking violence.

So many fantasy novels that are focused on finding the magic sword or crystal gauntlet or whatnot. In science fiction, it’s always about raising an ancient rail canon from the surface of a dying star or carpet bombing the planet of the flufftoids. In horror, it’s about turning birds inside out, or making lampshades out of skin.

How many times did our parents tell us this very thing? Using words is more difficult than simply socking someone in the jaw. Same thing in writing. Violence has consequences that most books don’t delve enough into. I’m not saying books shouldn’t have violence. Violence is a part of our world and I assume all other worlds as well. But why are our protagonists most commonly fencers and jousters and knights and battlemages? Can’t we write compelling stories about dancers and merchants and chemists and cooks?

But this is just a look at violence as a quantitative force in fantasy. If we take for granted the fact that four out of every five fantasy books will have a non-negligible amount of violence in them, then should the discussion be less about whether fantasy has too much violence, and more about the purpose the violence serves?

Clockwork Orange

I think this is the real discussion. I’ve suggested that violence works best when we’re forced as readers to confront both the action and consequence. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess does a brilliant job doing this because of Nadsat. By being forced to decode what is going on in the work, we become intimate with the violence. Violence is shown to permeate this world in much the same way oxygen does. The same could be said of Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Violence is visceral and harried in this work. Where most of the violence is perpetrated against non-human characters, we still are forced to confront the victim in the form of the Lord of the Flies . The pig’s-head-cum-Baal becomes a manifestation of the darker side of morality. Violence becomes a physical, almost weighty presence in this world.

Good fantasy presents violence in a way that affects both the characters involved as well as the world in which the violence takes place. In The Lies of Locke Lamora, the violence is personal, intimate; the consequences deep and traumatic. When someone in Locke’s life is killed, it affects him at his most base level. The need for vengeance drives Locke into a very dark place, and the lengths he goes to make the violators pay are shocking. Violence changes Locke, just as it would to someone in our primary world.

A Song of Ice and Fire is very violent, but in many circumstances, the violence has meaning and far reaching consequences. After a fight or a battle comrades are grieved over, foes are cursed, tallies are taken. However, the series seems to focus on the consequences of shocking violence: an assassination, an ambush, an orchestrated martial campaign, a naval attack. Casual violence — especially sexual violence — often goes without comment or consequence. This is the type of violence that I believe detracts from a work; a video game type of violence where the only purpose is to increase the body count by one.

Violence without purpose is not only harmful to a work, it’s dangerous. It’s a sociopathic type of violence that may have unintended consequences for the work as a whole. There are times when this violence is necessary and fits the work, but more often than not, it comes off as cheap and vulgar.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, art by The Searching Eyes

The oxymoronic phrase “realism in fantasy” is often used to justify copious amounts of violence in a work.

When I try to come up with fantasy books where the main plot does not revolve around violence, however, things become difficult. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a wonderful, tense novel with very little violence. Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia McKillip has more the threat of violence than actual violence, and although the plot sets up a violent climax, it is actually resolved through the cleverness of its characters (something not often seen in fantasy). The short stories of Ken Liu very rarely feature violence.

The oxymoronic phrase “realism in fantasy” is often used to justify copious amounts of violence in a work. Okay. As much of a problem as I have with that phrase, I’ll indulge it. Use violence to make a work seem “more real.” For this to remain true, the violence needs to be visceral, but tempered by reaction and emotion. If violence occurs, it should be explored.

Think of the real world. If I punched you in the mouth, neither of us would walk away and think about what spells we may need on our upcoming journey to the Dark Lands. No, you would either punch me back, cover up, or flee. I would keep punching, give chase, or try to hide from the fuzz. Either way, the only thoughts in our head for the next few hours or days would be related to the punch. You may take up self-defense courses. I may become paranoid about going to prison. I may try to make amends. You may confront me. Our lives would be changed, possibly for good. It wouldn’t be a punch in a vacuum. Punches do not exist in vacuum.

Is it time for fantasy to look at alternative plots, where violence doesn’t extend beyond a fistfight and tension is created in different ways?

Extrapolate that further to the extreme violence of murder and genocide often seen in fantasy and you can see what I’m trying to get at. Even when tens of thousands of people die in a war, they are killed by other people. All these people — violators and victims — have minds and lives and histories and desires. Violence is an active process that characters engage in. So should be the aftermath. There needs to be reflection and consequence. Even if a character’s reflection is that they don’t want to reflect on what they just did or what happened to them, that counts as a reflection and says a lot about their character. To jump back to a quantitative approach to fantasy, I think the big misinterpretation is: “Stories need conflict, therefore stories need violence.” Conflict does not necessarily mean violence. We all go through conflicts everyday and end with anything but pints of blood.

What works do you think handle violence the best? The worst? Is it time for fantasy to look at alternative plots, where violence doesn’t extend beyond a fistfight and tension is created in different ways? Is violence the easy way out?

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published in two parts ( Part One , Part Two ) on Adam Callaway’s blog.

Written by Adam Callaway

Adam Callaway's stories have appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flurb, and The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. You can find him on Twitter @adamcallaways , or via his website at http://www.adamcallaways.com .

http://www.adamcallaway.net/

I think Adam, while bringing up some interesting and salient points, misses the mark in this essay. Specifically, the title itself is rather misleading as it poses a question that isn’t particularly valid.

All types of fiction either do or do not deal with the consequences of violence, depending on the author. To suggest, as the title does, that this is an issue somehow particular to the fantasy genre is (possibly unintentionally) disingenuous. The title also suggests that fantasy at one time knew and cared about the consequences of violence, as though there were some generally agreed upon standard that the genre has fallen/is falling from. This is simply not the case.

One final thought about how violence relates to fantasy: In many of the sub-genres of fantasy (high, epic, dark, sword & sorcery) violence (often even over-the-top violence) is either an expected or even arguably integral trope, or the conventions of the genre lead to larger than life plot consequences which often mean confrontation on a world-shattering scale. I do not argue that violence should be included for violence’s sake, nor that violence should be consequence free to the psyches of the characters involved (if they are human and are possessed of more or less normal human psychological reactions). But I would caution any writer who is considering removing violence from their work for a moral, rather than creative reason to think carefully before not delivering on a genre’s expectations. Readers read what they read because that is what they enjoy. To package something as what it is not is cheating a reader out of the experience he or she has paid for and expects.

Sounds like someone looking for a USP and some publicity for their own book.

The rest of it makes little sense.

“So many fantasy novels that are focused on finding the magic sword or crystal gauntlet or whatnot.”

Really, Adam, they are? What fantasy have you been reading recently? Or are you just building straw men. You put this statement immediately after listing a number of books… none of which do anything like that. It’s been pointed out to you before.

“Most major fantasy releases deal almost exclusively with violence it seems: A Song of Ice and Fire, The First Law, The Prince of Thorns, etc.”

Ah… no. You think these books deal almost exclusively with violence? Have you read them? I find it hard to believe. ASOIAF is almost exclusively about violence is it. Someone asks you what those five books are about and your answer is ‘violence’? Silly.

Adam’s perceptions are colored deeply by the world he inhabits. Most of us live in a world that is largely non-violent. It may very well be that Adam has never been punched in the mouth – it’s quite possible that he will live a long life and never be punched in the mouth. Thus if he actually is punched in the mouth, it will be a highly significant event for him. But even here in our modern worlds, there are those who live in environments where getting punched in the mouth is a routine and common occurrence. And for those people, Adam is completely off base when he claims that it won’t be forgotten about in an hour. Certainly, living in a violent environment has a serious effect on people, and the environment isn’t forgotten. But an individual act, particularly something as relatively benign as a single punch, would be quickly forgotten. And a single punch IS benign in some circumstances. For most of history, human beings have lived in violent environments. Violence, both received and given, was a routine part of life. And routine events often don’t have significant consequences. It’s only Adam’s unusual and privileged perspective, arising from living in a largely non-violent society, that makes him assume that they should.

@John — Just to chime in with my own thoughts, I think Adam’s response to your final question would be, “ A Song of Ice and Fire , is about the war for control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.” He mentions this in the original iteration of this essay , though I, perhaps erroneously, edited it out of this version.

His exact words,

In my first post, I posited whether or not fantasy relies too much on violence to move the plot forward. After further thought on this question, I believe it to be true. There are many fantasy books where the entire plot revolves around a fight or a war. A Song of Ice and Fire is all about the battle for the throne. The Lies of Locke Lamora hinges on a fight with the Gray King. Harry Potter sets up a final battle between good and evil over six books (with smaller battles providing the climax for nearly every volume in the series). The Magicians ends with a battle with the Beast. The list is endless.

I hope that clears up some of Adam’s position.

Thanks for the essay, Adam, and for reposting it here, Aidan. I read something similar by Jo Walton (I think) a year or two ago that challenged me to think about fantasy books I’d read that had little to no violence in them. The only one I could come close with was Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey.

Like you, I enjoy books with lots of violence it seems. But I would be thrilled if we got more books that weren’t necessarily violent – that continued to broaden the borders of fantasy fiction. It’s easy to find short fantasy fiction that isn’t violent – we publish it often at PodCastle (along with very violent stories). But I wonder why it’s more difficult to find in fantasy novels, or if I’m just not seeing them as much?

Anyway, thanks again for making me think – and I look forward to hearing more about your book.

And has anyone ever suggested that GRRM has ignored the consequences of war in his books? I doubt it because it’s a huge focus and it would be silly to suggest that he has. So again, using ASOIAF as your first example in a piece headed ‘has fantasy forgotten the consequences of violence’ and saying that it is almost exclusively about violence is silly. It is about warfare (among many other things) and the consequences of that warfare are a major focus.

Dan J: I’m not trying to argue here, but I find your post awfully confusing. While I agree that Adam is privileged in comparison to a lot of people (he’s white, male, and American, after all) I think it’s probably a good use of that privilege to question violence, rather than just accepting it as a natural part of life. And, I grant you, it is a natural part of life – I don’t doubt that. But I do doubt the part where we have to accept that without question.

I very much doubt that cultures where face-punches are doled out on a daily basis are very happy that things are that way, even if the punch doesn’t scar them for life. At a certain point, people become desensitized and violence becomes meaningless, but that’s not a reward, or something we should strive for. Violence shouldn’t be commonplace for anyone. And while I don’t think it was your intent to insult anyone (nor is it mine to insult you) I do think it’s an insult to other cultures to suggest that they somehow feel violence less acutely than we pampered Westerners. For further evidence of that, search the internet for footage of the military officers during the Vietnam war explaining to the public that the Vietnamese don’t put the same premium on life that we do in the west. It would be laughable if it wasn’t completely insane and insidious.

So, while I understand your point of view, I don’t think I could accept such an ambiguous view of violence. Hurting people is bad – even if we were once animals, even if we did it all the time, even if we still do it quite a bit. We know that now, or at least we should. We’re certainly evolved enough to know it, though perhaps not evolved enough to avoid the self-indulgent impulses that often lead us in to violence.

And I DO read violent books and will continue to do so. I don’t want to read about grandmothers and kittens, or bakery workers happily rolling dough. But I also acknowledge the fact that we’re heading down a dark road when we start thinking of violence as meaningless.

But again – you might not have been implying that it is meaningless. Maybe you were just making the observation that Adam only feels this way because he’s privileged. If that’s the case – my bad.

@John — If we’ve established that, while violent, A Song of Ice and Fire successfully explores the consequences of violence (which I agree with), maybe it would be interesting to dig into the idea of why it’s so successful at doing so. What does A Song of Ice and Fire do that makes the violence (and Martin’s famous proclivity for suddenly killing off major characters, who readers are emotionally attached to) integral to his series, where it might seem gratuitous in the works of other authors.

I think that one of the things that makes Sansa Stark’s storyline so compelling is that the methods to her survival in the world are entirely non-violent, yet she has to react to the violent and deadly actions and ambitions of those around her (without spoiling, specifically the deaths at the end of A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows .

If we’ve established that, while violent, A Song of Ice and Fire successfully explores the consequences of violence then we’ve debunked the credentials and approach of the poster.

John, I feel like the conversation can (and should) extend past the text of the original essay.

An interesting idea. I agree that The Night Circus is notable and unusual for its lack of direct violence — Sharon Shinn’s Troubled Waters is also interesting in that regard. I think that sometimes taking violent action to solve a problem can be a shortcut for empowerment for a character. I remember that one of the notes I got on my original version of Generation V was that everyone was walking all over my main character, and after I had him beat up his awful roommate readers responded more positively. It’s an interesting topic.

I think the current generation of “grim” fantasy (Ice and Fire, Joe Abercrombie, etc) is in large part a reaction to the older style of “heroic” fantasy, starting with Tolkien. The heroic tradition is packed full of utterly consequence-free violence — the heroes slay orcs and foemen by the score, and nobody even thinks twice about what happens afterward. Only the occasional casualty among the “good guys” matters. I know GRRM explicitly wanted to show the “reality” of the traditional knights & castles world, in opposition to Mallory, Tolkien, et al and their expurgated version.

In a larger sense, I have to ask — why pick on fantasy? Essentially every genre (aside from literary, maybe) is full of violence, as are various other popular entertainments; this commentary could apply just as easily to SF, video games, movies, etc. It’s not a “media fetish” in the sense of something pushed in from the outside — basically, many people (probably *most* people) like to read/watch this kind of entertainment. It’s nothing new, either; go back a couple of thousand years and you’ll find Greek heroes slaying and massacring just as cheerfully as Aragorn or The Hound.

Django: I picked on fantasy because it’s what I read, write, and love. You are more than correct that violence extends to most facets of life. My point in the post was in asking whether or not fantasy fiction uses violence too often as a plot device. It seems that in a genre known for its complete lack of boundaries, that there would be room and cause to write other types of plots. Again, not “non-violent” plots, but plots that rely less on violence to move them forward.

John, Adam said: “A Song of Ice and Fire is very violent, but in many circumstances, the violence has meaning and far reaching consequences.”

I don’t think Adam is bashing on ASoIaF the way you think he is. I don’t agree with everything Adam says about it (see lack of consequences for casual violence), but there’s also a broader conversation happening about fantasy, and some of the self-imposed limits authors are putting on it. I think the larger conversation is less about GRRM, I think, and more about authors in GRRM’s shadow, as well as other authors working in other subgenres of fantasy.

With all due respect, I think you may be missing the mark here. You point out that Martin, Lawrence, and Abercrombie deal almost exclusively with violence. I would say that each of those writers’ work is about the effects of violence, (almost always detrimental by the way) amoung other things. I would venture that all of these excellent authors are not using violence as simply to move the plot forward, but as a way to illuminate the effects of that violence on society, their characters, and even in the readers. I would venture that Martin made death matter in fantasy novels like no one else. While Lawrence, shows the effects of violence on the psyche with his unflinchingly sociopathic protagonist Jorg. Abercrombie shows the regret and soul crushing weariness that being a man of violence brings in his portrayal of Logen Ninefingers. I think to say that violence is used as a crutch or overdone is a bit of a gross over simplification, if it were only to keep things moving, like explosions in a Michael Bay film, I would agree with you. But these authors are saying a hell of a lot more than that.

But that’s just my two cents.

Django, you realize you’re only talking about one subset of fantasy, right? To be fair, all the subsets seem to overly rely on violence. And I love dark, violent fantasy (Gaiman, Mieville, etc.) But I don’t see why if there are exceptions in “mainstream” lit, there can’t be exceptions in fantasy lit too.

I like to think Fantasy is the biggest and broadest genre there is, and as much as I enjoy the violence, I’d like to see more of the non-violence in those worlds and stories too.

Dave — The “grim” sort of fantasy is definitely only a single sub-genre, as is the “heroic” tradition that proceeded it. But (as Adam points out) in fantasy in general (I would say, in genre fiction in general!) books that don’t rely on violence are definitely the exceptions to the rule.

Dave, I think he’s just as wrong about all the other titles he cites. I just used GRRM as it was his first example and more people would know for themselves how hollow the accusation was there. He’s just creating a mythical other to rail against. I read these books. I don’t see it. I’m far from convinced he reads them.

If he was just saying ‘I’d like to read non-violent books & hey, [promotion] I’m writing one [/promotion]’, that would be fine. What he’s doing is falsely accusing specific books (& the genre as a whole) of forgetting the consequences of violence, which is patently untrue for the specific books and empty words for the larger arena.

A fantasy story about cooking without violence? It was called “Ratatouille”. :)

@Brian — Heh. Perfect.

John: The title of the article was a bit misleading, but it seems like you’re taking the title to be my thesis, which is not. I’m trying to explore many questions in this article, “How is violence explored in fantasy? Why is there so much of it? What does it mean when violence is causal? Where are the less-violent fantasy books?” Exploring those questions, I look at various examples of books that are seen as violent and those that are seen as less-violent. Take my example of A Song of Ice and Fire (which is the only example people seem to hooking on to). I do acknowledge that a lot of the violence in ASoIaF is justified and explored, however there are also many instances of violence that are glossed over, where the aggressors and victims act like nothing happened. This is the type of violence that I think fantasy — as well as literature as a whole — should try to avoid, as it cheapens the work. When violence happens in a casual sense (and it’s clear that it’s not purposefully casual) then, to me, the author has forgotten that violence has consequences.

I definitely agree with the point about casual sexual violence in ASOIAF and its lack of consequences – I stopped reading after 2 books because I found it unpleasant.

WRT the rest – I guess it all comes down to our old friend the hypothalamus, the little area of the brain that controls the 4 Fs: fighting, fleeing, feeding and mating :) What excites our little primate brains is content that stimulates the hypothalamus, and it’s been shown that reading fiction is neurologically very similar to the equivalent real-life experience.

As for why there’s a lot of violence in fantasy, well, most of it takes its cues from medieval or Renaissance cultures where violence was commonplace. A world where beating your wife and children was considered normal; where boys of 12 or 14 were routinely taken onto the battlefield as pages and squires; where gruesome public executions were a family day out. To some extent, yes, violence should have consequences, if you want to connect emotionally with your audience, but at the same time I don’t think the characters would be anywhere near as traumatised by violence as someone living in a quiet English suburb. It’s a tricky balance, and one that every writer has to address for themselves.

For my own part, my swordsman protagonist avoids violence as much as possible because he lives in a world without magical healing – but as a former soldier he will kill if attacked, without compunction. There are other ways to present life-and-death situations that keep the reader on the edge of their seat, after all. Often the threat of violence is more effective than the clash of swords…

It would seem facile to say that in a book that is clearly concerned with the consequences of acts violence both en masse (the war) and individually (Jaimie’s hand for example or Bran’s injury) the fact that some subset of violent acts are not explored is a failing. No successful story can get bogged down at every single turn just because it’s become a special interest of yours. GRRM was driven by issues of focus and momentum, not avoiding someone saying this particular violent act was only mentioned briefly.

I disagree that literature as a whole should try to avoid violence that is not fully explored. Literature as a whole shouldn’t do any single thing. How straitjacketing is that? It depends what story is being told, what point is being made, what emotion is on the line. We’re talking about literature. For adults. It’s not an instructions manual. We’re not educating children. Society won’t crumble if one act of violence goes unchallenged on the page of a book. Your personal morality won’t be threatened if a fictional character gets off free and clear with wickedness.

Write your book and good luck to you. Me, I’m for diversity.

Seems to me that you and Adam are arguing for the same ending, John.

John: I would ask you to focus your argument against my words and to not make baseless assumptions about my morality. Once again, I will say that you misinterpreted me. My line on casual violence was: “When violence happens in a casual sense (and it’s clear that it’s not purposefully casual) then, to me, the author has forgotten that violence has consequences.”

I am all for diversity in literature. That was one of the points of the article. Where are all the fantasies that deal with subject matter other than violence? I am not morally opposed to violence in literature. Far from it (which I pointed out multiple times in the article). I’m just becoming numb to the sheer amount of violence in literature and want a change of pace.

Is it really untrue and empty words? I think its equally subjective and fallacious to point at fantasy and to say “Hey, there’s too much superficial violence there!” than to say “Hey, there isn’t!” Do we have numbers? I know most of the high budget movies today are very inclined to the “violence without consequences” tropes. The count is easy to do, it comes from the newspaper premiere lists. But books? That’s really hard to measure.

Violence and conflict ARE mainstays of fantasy–because they work well as shorthands for other sorts of conflicts. I wouldn’t call it lazy, but it stems from the same reasons why fantasy is full of kingdoms and not constitutional democracies and republics–its simpler, for author and reader. Does that make it right? No, but it does simplify matters and make for more accessible drama.

To address some of your later points, which I find far more compelling than a perceived dismissal of the noted novels as violent for its own sake. I’d have to agree that the aftermath of violence is often more compelling than the violence itself. And their are plenty of authors that deal in that aftermath, Kameron Hurley & Jeff Salyards come immediately to mind. Zachary Jernigan as well, though not as obviously. Now none of these have the instat cache of name dropping GRRM, but I would venture that their novels while plenty violent spend far more time discussing the after effects of bloodshed on their characters than endless sprays of meaningless blood. Vioence is traumatic and I think that perhaps in fantasy that trauma is often minimized or handled more subtly than you seem to prefer but it is there. Is Arya’s decent into sociopathy not a direct result of all of the bloodshed and emotional trauma that follows Eddard’s execution? Is Ninefingers attempt to leave violence behind not a reaction to the countless lives he’s taken and the weight those lives settling on his shoulders. I agree that violence is not the only way but I don’t think modern fantasy is largely guilty as a genre of over simplifying its impact.

Your words:

“When violence happens in a casual sense (and it’s clear that it’s not purposefully casual) then, to me, the author has forgotten that violence has consequences.”

Well. “not purposefully casual” So not on purpose then, or not with purpose? When someone does something not on purpose… what is that? A mistake? An error? An oversight? So when the author has made an oversight or error about violence “the author has forgotten that violence has consequences”

Well yes. I can agree that when an author has forgotten the consequences of violence they have forgotten that violence has consequences.

Putting tautology aside though… how do you assert that the instances of casual violence are not purposefully casual? That seems to me an impossibility. It seems instead that you’ve decided the instances of casual violence are not purposeful and that the authors have made an error. That I would disagree with.

Thank you, Adam, for bringing these issues up for discussion again.

We who live in houses with big glass windows (that say “pike me, please!”) are living in a kind of security unimaginable for most of the millenia of human existence. It seems to me sometimes that we are so far from violence that our sensitivity to it is muted. Thus, a smack doesn’t register, it has to be a beating. A beating doesn’t register, the victim has to be left bloody and broken. A bit of the rack or the whip doesn’t register as torture anymore; it has to be vicious and extreme. Thus, in fiction, we are seeing villains of such viciousness that Sauron would look askance; torture that Stalin would find excessive; cruelty that de Sade would stop for and take notes.

Someone who has been beaten can’t read of beatings like that; it hurts too much. I do not wish for us to undergo sensitivity training: Actual war zones leave very little time to write. But taking responsibility for gratuitous violence, gratuitous rapes, gratuitous maimings and cruelty, I think makes for better writing. It’s like swearing, in a play. It loses its power if these weighted words are used to often; the audience tunes it out. But used once, or twice, such words fall like hammer blows. That way, you don’t have to hit so hard to have an effect.

Lieutenant Dingledine, my point wasn’t that violence is meaningless, at least certainly not in the sense I assume that you mean it. There’s enough to say on this subject to fill a few volumes, but my main point was simply this: Adam seems to be claiming that authors are not addressing violence realistically because they don’t address it in the same manner as it would be addressed if it occurred in modern society to a modern person. A punch in the nose to Adam is a very different event than a punch in the nose to someone in a violent society and the reaction to the exact same event will be very different. A character who “… think[s] about what spells [he] may need on [his] upcoming journey to the Dark Lands…” after a punch in the nose may very well be reacting more realistically than one who takes the actions Adam suggested.

Aidan, I hope you will forgive me to jumping in to say something that has nothing to do with the post, but more to do with the comments, and likewise that you will forgive me for being rather blunt about it.

The profound level of mischaracterization, rudeness, and just plain douchebaggery in a post that is essentially about something as innocuous as “fantasy haz violence and I don’t lyk it” (sorry, Adam, but it had to be done to keep this lightly toned) reminds me why often having any debate in this community produces about the same end value as arguing with anti-Obama (or anti-Romney) people on YouTube. You can disagree with Adam (I do on many points), but I fail to see the value of using an aggressive tone, borderline ad hominem attacks, and so on for what amounts to “not a big deal.” You disagree. Great. Have a discussion about it like big boys (or big girls). Don’t be a dick about it.

Excuse me. I need to correct myself. “in a post” should read “in the comments for a post.” My apologies. That makes it seem like I’m addressing this solely to Adam…But, what the heck. Stop drudging arguments, you little fishstick person you! *glare-face at Adam*

Eh, and on that note, I’m going to take back “douchebaggery.” I think that’s unfair in this instance. Rudeness still stands, but it’s probably wrong of me to characterize this as douchebaggery. Withdrawn.

I’ll stop myself now. *hugs Aidan with spiky armor*

*flinches away from SMD*

Great post; the issue of violence in fantasy is one I have been thinking about as well. I do think we’ve (writers and readers) have conflated conflict with violence, and as Paul said above, it works as a shorthand. But it would be great to explore that a bit more. (I think Mark Charan Newton is doing this in his new series, which at least has elements of the mystery genre). Regardless of what Martin and company have done, I think the genre will only be strengthened with an increase of narratives by non-violent characters. (Non-fighters are also a much more realistic sample of humanity than nobles/warriors.)

Write more non-violent fantasy. If it’s written well, and fans of the genre are open to it, they will buy it. And if they buy it, more authors will write it–and then there will no longer be the disparity that seemed to initially bother you.

If you build it (and it’s worthy), they will come. I’m a little tired of all the lamenting about what fantasy [i]doesn’t[/i] currently do. You can’t [i]essay[/i] or [i]blog[/i] genre fiction that meets your personal standards/wishes into existence. You can only [i]write[/i] it into existence and hope there’s enough like-minded readers to support it (and hopefully more like it).

I like your fiction. It never occurred to me that there was less violence in your stories. To be perfectly honest: as a reader… I don’t really [i]care[/i] why I like something.

Damn! Where’s that ‘Edit Comment’ button Aidan? ;)

@Doug — While I mostly agree, I wonder about this comment,

You can’t essay or blog genre fiction that meets your personal standards/wishes into existence. You can only write it into existence and hope there’s enough like-minded readers to support it (and hopefully more like it).

and whether it’s not also a beneficial step for essays like this one to exist as a way to open dialogue among readers and writers?

It could be beneficial, I suppose–I certainly don’t mean to dismiss it out of hand. It’s just that I’m not really all that interested in non-fiction about fantasy fiction (except maybe for release dates, content summaries/reviews and the like, if that counts). I’ve always found it a bit silly, to tell the truth. And I’m not entirely certain that there NEEDS to be open dialogue between readers and writers. I’ve always thought the fiction WAS the dialogue.

What’s that one rule of story writing that always gets touted so much?… “Show, don’t tell?” Well that’s exactly how I feel about all this. Don’t TELL me what you wish was happening in the fantasy genre … SHOW me what you think the fantasy genre ought to be more like. Maybe I’ll agree, and maybe I won’t.

Not Show Don’t Tell! Please! It’s like the worst touted writing “rule” ever. Sometimes, you really just need to tell.

Obviously, I’m also really happy for conversations like this one – non-fiction about fantasy fiction to happen. It’s thought-provoking, and challenging, and I appreciate the effort.

Great article. Thought-provoking for sure. I recommend Peter Beagle’s short stories for some serious fantasy without reliance on violence to forward the plot.

[…] read Adam Callaway’s article on violence in sf/f yesterday. (Word of caution: for whatever reason, that site slowed my computer waaayyyy dooowwwnn […]

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24 The Extremes of Conflict in Literature: Violence, Homicide, and War

Joseph Carroll, Department of English, University of Missouri, St. Louis, St. Louis, MO

• Published: 21 November 2012
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Literature depicts emotions arising from conflict and makes them available to readers, who experience them vicariously. Literary meaning lodges itself not in depicted events alone but also, and more importantly, in the interpretation of depicted events: in the author's treatment of the depicted events; the reader's response to both the depicted events and the author's treatment; and the author's anticipation of the reader's responses. This chapter outlines possible stances toward violence, makes an argument for the decisive structural significance of violence in both life and literature, and then presents a representative sampling of violent acts in literature. The examples from literature are organized into the main kinds of human relationships: one's relation to oneself (suicide); sexual rivals, lovers, and marital partners; family members (parents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins); communities (violence within social groups); and warfare (violence between social groups).

Introduction

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! — Darwin , 1903 ; 1: 94; letter to Joseph Hooker of July 13, 1856

The world is a violent place. More are born, in every generation, than can survive. Natural selection filters out weaker organisms. Among creatures with nervous systems, those that do not survive seldom go quietly into that good night. They struggle and often suffer horribly before they die. Many become food for other animals. All compete for scarce resources against other creatures, including members of their own species. Human beings, despite all their technological and cultural contrivances, have not escaped this universal struggle. Conflict and struggle are integral to the evolved and adapted characteristics of human nature. Literature arises out of and depicts human nature, so conflict is integral to literature, too.

Literary works sometimes depict hostile encounters between alien groups, but more frequently, the emotional interest of literary works arises out of conflicts among people who are intimately related to one another. Such conflicts are a natural product of inclusive fitness. Like other animals, human beings share fitness interests with their mates and offspring. Except for identical twins, though, the fitness interests of even the most closely related kin are not identical. Inclusive fitness produces a perpetual drama in which intimacy and opposition, cooperation and conflict, are closely intertwined.

The evolved reproductive strategies of men include both paternal investment, which requires mate guarding, and low-investment short-term mating, which often requires eluding the vigilance of other men. Men form coalitions for cooperative endeavor but also compete for mates (Geary & Flinn, 2001 ). Women have evolved strategies for securing a bonded attachment with men willing to commit resources, but they have also evolved strategies for taking advantage of short-term mating opportunities with other men, especially men who have higher genetic quality than their own mates (Buss, 2000 , 2003 ; Geary, 1998 ). The pleasurable feelings associated with sexual relations are thus necessarily tinged with suspicion, jealousy, frustration, and resentment. Much of the time, men and women manage workable compromises, but sexual relations sometimes break down in rejection, violent emotional struggle, and physical abuse, including murder (Buss, 2000 ; Daly & Wilson, 1988 ).

A parent and child both have a fitness interest in the child surviving and reproducing, but a child has a 100% genetic investment in itself; each parent has only a 50% genetic investment in a child. Mother–child conflict begins in the mother's womb, with the embryo struggling to acquire more resources from the mother than the mother is willing to give. Siblings share fitness interests but also compete for resources. Parents must often distribute resources across multiple offspring, all of whom want more than an equal share. Parents often prefer some children to others, and they must also make choices between effort devoted to parenting and effort devoted to mating. Such tensions can and do erupt into homicidal violence, in both life and literature.

The conflicts generated from differing fitness interests manifest at the proximal level as motives that are driven by emotions: desire, love, jealousy, guilt, shame, frustration, resentment, rage, and hatred (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000 ; Ekman, 2003 ; Plutchik, 2003 ). Literature depicts such emotions, evokes them, and makes them available to readers, who experience them vicariously (Oatley, 1999 , 2002 , 2003 ; Tan, 2000 ). An author and a reader inhabit an imagined world created by the author, who chooses a subject, adopts a stance toward that subject, organizes the presentation of the subject, and modulates style and tone to affect the reader's responses. Readers can passively register the images and sensations thus evoked, but they can also stand apart from them, situating them in their own analytic and evaluative frameworks. Literary criticism is only the most explicit and highly developed form of readers’ reflections on the imagined worlds created by authors.

Literary meaning lodges itself not in depicted events alone but also, and more importantly, in the interpretation of depicted events: in the author's treatment of the depicted events; the reader's response to both the depicted events and the author's treatment; and the author's anticipation of the reader's responses. It is worth pausing to emphasize the fundamentally social and psychological character of literature. Meaning in literature cannot be reduced to plot. Meaning consists in an imaginative experience at least partially shared between an author and a reader. When we analyze narrative/mimetic literature (stories, plays, and novels, as opposed to lyric poems), we have to consider the interplay of perspectives among characters, authors, and readers: how characters regard one another, what they think about one another, what the author thinks of them, what the author anticipates readers will think, and what readers actually do think about the characters and also about the author's responses to the characters. Consequently, in this chapter, the literary examples do not consist only in plot summaries. The chapter also takes account of authorial stances and readers’ responses. Authorial stance and reader response are the substance of literary experience; they are, accordingly, the proper subject matter of literary criticism.

After outlining a range of stances toward psychopathic violence, this chapter makes an argument for the decisive structural significance of violence in both life and literature. The chapter then presents a representative sampling of violent acts in literature. The examples from literature are organized into the main kinds of human relationships: one's relation to oneself (suicide); sexual rivals, lovers, and marital partners; family members (parents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins); communities (violence within social groups); and warfare (violence between social groups).

Stances Toward Cruelty

Psychopathic cruelty is relatively rare (Baumeister, 1996 ; Grossman, 2009 ). Even in genocidal warfare, people seldom regard their own behavior as intentional harm inflicted for pleasure. Instead they rationalize violence as self-defense or as a means toward a greater good. They also minimize or turn a blind eye toward the suffering of victims and instead magnify threats to themselves (Baumeister, 1996 ; Smith, 2007 ). Studies of soldiers in warfare support the contention that most people in postagricultural societies are on the whole reluctant to harm others. Even after heavy conditioning, and even when they are themselves in danger, many soldiers never fire their weapons, or they fire to miss (Grossman, 2009 ; Marshall, 1947 ). (Wade [ 2006 ] and Cochran and Harpending [ 2009 ] argue that sedentism, a prerequisite to agricultural and industrial economies, has selected for personalities less prone to violence.) Psychopaths, people who actively enjoy killing and feel no remorse, evidently constitute only about 2% of modern male populations (Swank & Marchand, 1946 ; cited in Grossman, 2009 , p. 44). A similar percentage would probably prevail among male literary authors, and a still smaller percentage among female authors. Only a very few literary authors clearly invite readers to participate vicariously in sadistic pleasure. The Marquis de Sade, whose name is the source for the term “sadism,” is one such author. (See for instance One Hundred Days of Sodom .) In the final chapter of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange , the first-person narrator unconvincingly disavows the gleeful psychopathic violence in the main body of the novel. In contemporary fiction, the most prominent overtly psychopathic novel is Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho . Film directors attracted to sadistic cruelty include Stanley Kubrick and Brian de Palma. Kubrick produced a film version of A Clockwork Orange ; and both Kubrick and de Palma produced film versions of Stephen King novels, eliminating, in both cases, the compassion that gives emotional depth to King's explorations of horror (Kubrick, The Shining ; de Palma, Carrie ). In most literary works that depict psychopathic cruelty, the author's stance registers revulsion against cruelty.

Baumeister ( 1996 ) defines “evil” most simply as “the adversary of good” (p. 67). We tend to regard ourselves and our associates as good people, and our enemies as bad people. Our enemies, who have their own distinct points of view, reverse the nomenclature. In fiction, the “good” is typically embodied in protagonists—agents with whom readers are invited to sympathize—and evil is embodied in their adversaries, that is, in antagonists (Carroll, Gottschall, Johnson, & Kruger, 2008 ; Carroll, Gottschall, Johnson, Kruger, & Georgiades, 2010 ; Johnson, Carroll, Gottschall, & Kruger, 2008 , 2011 ). Among literary characters, most psychopaths are antagonists, for instance: Iago in Shakespeare's Othello ; the malignant dwarf Daniel Quilp in Charles Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop ; Mr. Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ; the Catholic priest who tortures Dr. Monygham in Joseph Conrad's Nostromo ; the renegade Blue Duck in Larry McMurtry's western Lonesome Dove ; and the serial killer Arnold Friend (based on a real person) in Joyce Carol Oates's frequently anthologized story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

A few narratives adopt a structurally ironic stance, taking psychopaths as ostensible protagonists but treating them with implicit contempt and anger. Instances include Henry Fielding's caustic 18th-century narrative about a professional criminal, Jonathan Wilde , and William Makepeace Thackeray's depiction of Barry Lyndon, a heartless rogue who leaves a trail of wreckage behind him. (Kubrick's filmed version of Barry Lyndon eliminates Thackeray's satiric stance and turns the story into a prettily filmed picaresque adventure.)

Some writers are hard to locate clearly on either side of the divide between psychopathic and sympathetic perspectives. Flannery O'Connor, for instance, a Catholic American writer from the middle of the 20th century, envisions homicidal violence as a means of transcending ordinary social life, which she regards as hypocritical and spiritually shallow. Her story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”—one of the most widely anthologized of all short stories—depicts a psychopathic killer, The Misfit, as a religious skeptic. The protagonist of the story is an old woman who achieves, in terror for her life, a moment of Christian charity toward her killer. The protagonists of O'Connor's novels The Violent Bear It Away and Wise Blood both achieve spiritual metamorphosis through acts of homicidal violence.

Among contemporary writers held in high esteem, Cormac McCarthy gives an exceptionally prominent place to graphic violence. Throughout McCarthy's novels, gaining a tough-minded, realistic perspective means accepting the ultimate, decisive reality of homicidal violence. The dead do not get to establish moral norms. In All the Pretty Horses , McCarthy's protagonist is a young man who gets thrown into a brutal Mexican prison. To survive, he has to accept that lethal violence takes priority over all moral considerations, but his struggle to come to terms with the necessity of his situation tacitly locates his homicidal behavior in a moral context. The protagonist of No Country for Old Men is humane and warm hearted. He ultimately falls victim to a psychopath who tempts readers to identify with his stance of cool command. A similar kind of temptation for the reader is at work in Shakespeare's depiction of Richard III. Like the protagonist of A Clockwork Orange , Richard is witty and droll, though vicious. Even when dominant characters are purely destructive, they naturally tempt readers to identify with them, but Shakespeare and McCarthy also include characters who offer alternative perspectives. Both authors leave it to the reader's own strength of mind to decide how to feel about the characters. In Blood Meridian , based on a historical event from the middle of the 19th century, McCarthy depicts a band of psychopathic killers who cut a swath of random violence through Mexico and the American Southwest. The protagonist is a boy who had been traumatized by violence from the time of his earliest memories. Though tagging along with the band, in a psychologically numbed condition, he is not ultimately absorbed into mindless and heartless brutality. In The Road , a futuristic novel situated in an American landscape devastated by an ecological holocaust, possibly nuclear, the moral lines are more clearly demarcated. The protagonists, a father and his son, are struggling to survive in an environment dominated by cannibalistic bands. The emotional focal point of the story is the father's devotion to his son. Though McCarthy is preoccupied with violence and often noncommittal in his own emotional responses, it seems safe to say that he is not ultimately a sadist along the lines of Burgess, Ellis, de Palma, and Kubrick. He just pushes the reader harder, in morally challenging ways, than most writers do.

How Important Is Violence in Literature?

Within social groups, the exercise of power tends heavily toward containing and deflecting lethal violence (Boehm, 1999 ). In virtually all social groups, the amount of time spent in violent encounters is small relative to the time spent in peaceful interaction. Nonetheless, because violence is the ultimate sanction against behavior that violates group norms, the potential for violence has a powerful organizing influence on behavior within a group. A similar point can be made with respect to interactions between social groups. One possible way to look at collective violence is to suppose that history consists in periods of peace and stability occasionally disturbed by military conflict. It would be more accurate to say that periods of peace and stability are contained and organized by periods of mass violence (Potts & Hayden, 2008 , pp. 12, 268). Consider American history. Americans have not had a war within their territorial boundaries since the Civil War, 150 years ago, but the country was founded on aggressive acts of territorial acquisition from the natives; the natives the first colonists encountered were just the survivors of about 15,000 years of savage tribal warfare; the nation came to birth, as a nation, in an act of collective, organized violence (The War of Independence); the South had an economy heavily dependent on slaves held in place by coercive force; the regional political conflict between the North and South was finally suppressed only in a bloody civil war; and during the last century America participated in the two largest wars in history, thus consolidating, for half a century, its now rapidly fading position as the dominant military and economic power in the world.

The picturesque landscapes of Europe—crumbling castles, walled towns overgrown with moss and ivy—are the quaint relics of a history of mass violence that shaped the demographic and political landscape. On the largest scale, world history consists in migrations and invasions: huge masses of armed people descending on other peoples, killing many of them, enslaving others, and gradually merging with the survivors. Instances on a continental scale include the barbarian hordes that inundated the Roman Empire; the Mongol invasions of China and Europe; the European invasions of North and South America; the Bantu expansion south and east in Africa; and the English colonization of Australia and New Zealand (Gibbon, 1776–1789/ 1994 ; Roberts, 2003 ; Turchin, 2007 ; Wells, 1921 ). Great Britain is the product of multiple genocidal events: the Germanic invasions that overwhelmed the Romanized Celts, who had themselves pushed aside the Picts; the Danish incursions into Anglo-Saxon lands; the brutal Norman conquest that subjugated the Anglo-Saxons and Danes; and the English conquests of Scotland and Ireland, especially Ireland (Davies, 1999 ; Johnson, 1980 ). World War II was initiated chiefly by German and Japanese efforts once again to change the shape of populations over whole continents (Davies, 2006 ; Gilbert, 1989 ; Keegan, 1990 ; Snyder, 2010 ; Spector, 1984 ). Both before and during the war, the Soviets reshaped and redistributed their vast population by starving, shooting, or deporting millions of their own citizens (Snyder, 2010 ). The period of relative geopolitical stability produced by World War II will not last forever. Expanding global population is placing increasing pressure on scarce resources, and that kind of pressure has always been a chief cause for the mass movement of populations. Sometime within the present century, the geopolitical landscape will perhaps be once again transformed by cataclysmic upheavals (Friedman, 2009 ; Wilson, 1998 , ch. 12 ).

The case for the organizing power of violence on a world-historical scale has a bearing on even the most domestic and polite form of literature: the “novel of manners.” Novels by authors such as Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope (both British writers of the 19th century) contain very little overt violence. Pride and Prejudice and Barchester Towers , for instance, chiefly concern themselves with conflicts over mate choice and social status. But these domestic dramas take place within a sociopolitical landscape that is the stabilized result of acts of domination: the domination of whole populations over others, in fashioning the British nation; the domination of the whole population by an elite class living off the proceeds of agricultural labor; and the political and religious upheavals, culminating in the English Civil War, that created a national church and associated it with the elite political class descended from military barons who had domineered over a population of serfs. Austen's novels take place during the era of the Napoleonic Wars. No battles are depicted, but officers of the army and navy figure very largely among the casts of characters. In Persuasion , the male protagonist, Captain Wentworth, has become rich off the spoils of the French vessels he has defeated in battle. The polite manners and well-regulated social hierarchies in domestic novels are like the rock formations produced by molten lava once it has cooled. The exercise of social power in such novels has stabilized, so that violence is no longer often necessary, but violence helped create the stabilized social order and still sustains it through foreign wars.

The novel of manners is built on a foundation of cooled and congealed violence. The action in much canonical literature is violence still hot and liquid. (“Canonical” literature is literature that has had a seminal, creative force that makes itself felt in subsequent literature.) For the literature of the West—Europe, the Americas, Australia, and those portions of Asia, especially Japan, that have come under the cultural sway of the West—canonical literature has two chief wellsprings: ancient Greece and the Bible. Both sources offer abundant entertainment for readers with a taste for what the protagonist of A Clockwork Orange fondly describes as “ultraviolence.”

The Old Testament consists largely in chronicling the wars, conquests, defeats, and enslavements of an ancient pastoral people who commonly practiced genocide against their neighbors (Headlam Wells, 2011 ). In the story of Noah's Flood, God goes the Hebrews one better, wiping out not just a few neighboring tribes but the whole human race, all but Noah and his family. The first family drama in the Bible, after Adam and Eve are cast out of paradise, is the murder of one brother by another. That theme is taken up again in Shakespeare's Hamlet , probably the single most widely known work of modern Western literature. Contemplating his crime, Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, laments, “O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; / It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, / A brother's murder” (3.3.36–38; for an evolutionary interpretation of Hamlet , see Carroll, 2011b , pp. 123–147).

So also with the Greeks. The oldest classic that has come down to us is Homer's Iliad . Much of the Iliad consists in graphic depictions of the grisly forms of death produced by barbarian warriors wielding edged and pointed weapons (Gottschall, 2008b ). Before the Greeks could set sail to rape, murder, and pillage among the Trojans, the Greek leader, Agamemnon, had to placate the Gods by sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia. And thereon hangs a tale, or series of tales: the Oresteia , three plays by Aeschylus ( Agamemnon , The Libation Bearers , and The Eumenides ). The act of child sacrifice sets off a chain reaction: Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus; and Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are murdered by Clytemnestra's son Orestes. In addition to being Clytemnestra's lover, Aegisthus had a second motive for murdering Agamemnon: Agamemnon and Aegisthus are cousins; Agamemnon's father Atreus had murdered Aegisthus's brothers, who, like Aegisthus, were Atreus's nephews. (The murderous conflict between Atreus and his brother Thyestes is the subject of a play, Thyestes , by the Roman playwright Seneca the Younger.)

If we fast forward to the Christian Middle Ages, skipping past the derivative drama of Rome and the illiterate centuries of barbarian chaos, the most prominent landmark is Dante's Inferno , which consists largely of graphic, gruesome descriptions of physical torture, varied with monstrous ingenuity, in the nine circles of hell. Fast forward once again, and the next major landmark in Western literature is Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Roman history plays Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra hinge on assassination and war. The English history plays chronicle the Wars of the Roses, a drawn-out sequence of intrigues, betrayals, assassinations, and bloody battles. The major tragedies ( Othello, Macbeth , Hamlet , and King Lear ) turn on murder, war, torture, or all three. Move up to the 19th century, a period in which representational/mimetic literature is dominated by the novel, and ask: What is widely regarded as the greatest of all novels? War and Peace , many would say. The central subject in War and Peace is Napoleon's invasion of Russia and the retreat in which most of his army perished. Tolstoy's chief competitor for title of greatest Russian novelist is Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment is about a young man who uses an axe to murder two old women; The Brothers Karamazov is about a malignant old man who is murdered by his illegitimate, psychopathic son. And in our own time, the last major canonical American novel that formed a shaping imaginative experience for a whole generation, many people feel, is Joseph Heller's Catch-22 , a war novel full of violent deaths.

In answer then, to the question, How important is violence to literature? we can say that violence is as important in literature as it is in life. Like sex, even when it does not take much time, proportionally, it can have a decisive impact on subsequent events. Gloucester in King Lear jokes that there was “good sport” at the making of his illegitimate son Edmund, but then Edmund betrays Gloucester to his enemies, who gouge out Gloucester's eyes. McMurtry's Lonesome Dove offers an illustration of the same point. The protagonists are two middle-aged cowboys, former Texas Rangers, on a cattle drive. At one point, they must fulfill the unpleasant task of hanging one of their old friends. The friend is good natured but morally lax and had inadvertently become involved with a band of psychopathic killers. Over the years, the amount of time the three friends had spent in genial exchange was much more extensive than the few minutes required to perform the hanging, but the hanging is more important, practically, than anything that had preceded it; moreover, it sets the moral quality of the relationship into stark relief, revealing that the executioners, unlike their condemned friend, have a severe commitment to a moral code.

The emotional intensity and decisive practical character of homicidal violence invest it with special significance as evidence for underlying force in human mental and emotional life. Hence the very large role violence plays in literature.

Literary Depictions of Violence in the Phases of Human Life History: A Sampling

Beneath all variation in the details of organization, the life history of every species forms a reproductive cycle. In the case of human beings, successful parental care produces children capable, when grown, of forming adult pair bonds, becoming functional members of a community, and caring for children of their own. Survival, mating, parenting, and social life thus form natural categories in the organization of human life. They are common topics in textbooks of evolutionary psychology and also common themes in literature. In this section, these categories are used to organize a sampling of depictions of violence in literature.

Violence Against Oneself

Understanding suicide from an evolutionary perspective.

People seem to have a natural inhibition against harming their own kind and a much greater inhibition against harming themselves. They often overcome both inhibitions, but not without a psychological cost. When we speak of “violence,” the connotations of that word do not limit themselves to actions. “Violence” suggests high stress: intense passion and conflict, including inner conflict. Popular “action” movies are imaginatively uninteresting because they falsely depict violence as easy; they are emotionally shallow. Literary depictions of violence are most interesting when they evoke the greatest degree of inner struggle. No form of inner struggle is more intense than that which culminates in taking one's own life.

Most forms of violence can plausibly be described as extensions of adaptive behavior—sexual jealousy, struggles for dominance or resources. Not suicide. Efforts to explain self-inflicted death as a strategy for propagating one's genes have a strained look about them (deCatanzaro, 1981 ). From an evolutionary standpoint, not all significant features of human physiology and behavior need be regarded as adaptive. Illnesses such as stroke, cancer, heart attack, and diabetes are not adaptations; they are breakdowns in complex adaptive systems. That does not mean that evolutionary explanations are irrelevant. To understand how and why a system breaks down, one must understand the function for which it was designed. Adaptation by means of natural selection is the default explanation for complex functional organization (Pinker, 1997 ; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992 ). It also provides the necessary explanatory context for dysfunctional behavior.

Humans have a uniquely developed sense of self-awareness that derives from the evolution of the neocortex. Individual persons have a sense of personal identity continuously developing over time, and they consciously locate themselves as individuals within social networks and within nature. Self-awareness facilitates planning and actions that require shared images of collective purpose (Hawkins & Blakeslee, 2004 ; Lane, 2009 , ch. 9 ; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005 ). Self-awareness is evidently functional; it is complex, expensive, universal, and reliably developing. It is also fragile. Human beings are peculiarly vulnerable to conceptions of their own existence that cause them intolerable mental pain. Grief, guilt, self-loathing, and the feeling of being trapped in impossible social situations or incurable mental illness can drive people to escape from their own minds in the only way possible: escaping from life itself.

Literary suicides arising from simple grief are relatively rare. They do not reveal complex inner conflicts and thus offer little insight into inner life. Romeo kills himself because he mistakenly thinks Juliet is dead; Juliet kills herself because Romeo has killed himself. Lyrically moving, yes; psychologically interesting, no. Guilt is a more complex emotion than simple sorrow and a more common motive for literary suicide. In the best known of all ancient plays, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex , Oedipus stops short of suicide, but when he discovers that he has murdered his father and married his mother, even though he had acted inadvertently, he gouges out his own eyes. Oedipus's incestuous marriage produced a daughter, Antigone. In Sophocles's Antigone , the autocrat Creon is Antigone's uncle but has Antigone walled up alive for defying his orders. She hangs herself. Creon's son, who is in love with Antigone, kills himself when she dies. His mother then kills herself. Antigone does not reach an emotional climax in Antigone's despair, her lover's grief, or the grief of his mother. It reaches emotional climax in the tragic anguish of Creon, humbled, shattered, chastened, riven by guilt, with his vision of himself and the world fundamentally and permanently changed. Shakespeare's Othello murders Desdemona out of sexual jealousy. When he realizes that he has been duped and that she was innocent, he first mortally wounds the man who deceived him and then kills himself, turning his sense of justice against himself. In Jean Racine's 17th-century version of the Phaedra story ( Phèdre ), a stepmother succumbs to a guilty passion for her stepson; when her husband, Theseus, brings down a fatal curse on his son, unable to endure the commingled grief and guilt, she poisons herself. In Conrad's novel Victory , the protagonist Axel Heyst loses faith in the woman he loves. Too late he realizes that while he had been cynically repudiating her, she had been giving her life for him. He builds a funeral pyre for her and uses it also to immolate himself. In Émile Zola's Thérèse Raquin , Thérèse has a passionate affair with her husband's closest friend. She and her lover murder her husband, but the guilt torments them until they take poison to escape from themselves and from each other.

In most readers’ perceptions, Thérèse and her lover undergo a transition in role: from being objects of horror—merely villains—to being objects of tragic pity. They learn about the moral magnitude of their crime only by committing it, but they do learn. As moral agents, they are thus radically distinct from characters such as Richard III, who commit horrible atrocities—Richard murders children—without ever feeling a shiver of guilt. On the scale of guilt, Shakespeare's Macbeth falls somewhere between Othello and Richard III. Macbeth and his wife are both tormented by guilt at the murders they have committed; she kills herself, but Macbeth, like Richard III, fights on to the end. Such a death leaves most readers suspended between a feeling of tragic pathos and a feeling of satisfaction at a just retribution. That ambivalent feeling can be contrasted to the simple emotions of grief and horror readers feel when Macbeth's henchmen murder Macduff's wife and children. (For convenience, responses to drama are designated as responses of “readers,” though of course drama is in the first instance intended to be watched and listened to, not read.)

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray has a fantastic plot device: Dorian remains perpetually young and beautiful, but his portrait becomes ever older and more hideously ugly, revealing the depravity of his soul, which has been corrupted by cruelty, drugs, and sexual excess. The portrait is an externalized image of his conscience. Riven by unresolvable conflicts between irrepressible desires and guilty self-loathing, he stabs the portrait in the heart; the portrait returns to its original state, and he himself lies dead, old and vile. Self-loathing is also the motive for suicide in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge . In middle age, the title character finds himself bereft of everything he had ever wanted or achieved; he is an outcast, without social standing, without friends, without family. He feels himself despised and also despises himself. He starves himself to death and leaves behind a will demanding that no man remember him. He has not lived a good or wise life, but having passed such severe judgment on himself, he leaves none for the reader to exercise in vindictive satisfaction.

Social Failure

People are social animals. Even their most intimate feelings about their own identities reflect their sense of their place in a social network. Some of the best-known literary suicides find themselves caught in a socially intolerable situation—entangled in forbidden or hopeless passions, pushed against the wall for lack of money, or trapped in an ideological or political impasse.

In Hippolytus , Euripides's version of the Phaedra story, Phaedra is caught out in an illicit passion for her stepson, realizes she is socially lost, and hangs herself. Virgil's Aeneid , the most prestigious and influential literary work of the Roman world, contains a long episode in which Aeneas, fleeing from the havoc at Troy, lingers with the Carthaginian Queen Dido. When he abandons her to pursue his destiny, she builds her own funeral pyre and dies on it. (Christopher Marlowe produced a dramatic version of the story, and Purcell an operatic version.) Dido dies not merely from sorrow but from the recognition that she has hopelessly compromised her position as queen. Anna Karenina leaves her husband for the man she loves. Discovering that passion alone, outside the system of accepted social roles, cannot sustain her, she throws herself under a train. Winnie Verloc, in Conrad's The Secret Agent , murders her husband, flings herself at another man, and when he abandons her, throws herself overboard from a ship. Lily Bart, the protagonist in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth , cannot bring herself to marry for money without love, or for love without money. She loses her place in the social world and poisons herself. In George Gissing's New Grub Street , Harold Biffen, an impoverished author, realizes he has no hope of winning a worldly woman's love. He poisons himself. In George Orwell's Burmese Days , John Flory, a colonial administrator, is publicly humiliated and then rejected by the woman he loves. He shoots himself and his dog.

In Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary , Emma Bovary takes arsenic because she has secretly gone into debt. The protagonist of Willa Cather's story “Paul's Case” is a sensitive adolescent aesthete, unfit for the world of middle-class squalor into which he is born. He steals money, lives a few days in luxury, and then throws himself in front of a train. In Dickens's Little Dorritt , the charlatan financier Mr. Merdle—a Bernie Madoff of the Victorian period—creates a speculative bubble and then cuts his throat before the bubble bursts. In Anthony Trollope's The Prime Minister , Ferdinand Lopez plays a high-stakes game for money and social position, loses, and throws himself in front of a train.

Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra , and Cassius and Brutus in Julius Caesar , are all political people; their inner sense of self is bound up in their political identity. When they come to the end of their political ropes, they all take their own lives. Cleopatra uses an adder to poison herself; Cassius and Brutus fall on their swords. Hyacinth Robinson, in Henry James's The Princess Casamassima , takes an oath to perform a political assassination. He loses confidence in the righteousness of his cause but still feels bound by his oath; he resolves his dilemma by shooting himself. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening , Edna Pontellier feels stifled by the sociosexual roles open to her in turn-of-the-century New Orleans; she swims out to sea and drowns. In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart , the protagonists Okonkwo attempts to lead the people of his tribe in a revolt against White domination; when the rebellion fails to take fire, he hangs himself.

Meaning in fiction depends heavily on the degree to which an author's perspective corresponds to that of any given character. Gissing's perspective in New Grub Street is morose and self-pitying; he identifies closely with Biffen, and even more closely with Biffen's friend, Edward Reardon, who dies of illness brought on by hunger and exposure. Tolstoy's stance toward Anna Karenina remains clinically detached, registering the vacuity of the social conventions against which Anna rebels, but registering also the self-destructive character of her emotional impulsiveness. Cather evokes Paul's aestheticism in a sensitive way, but she looks with cold irony at the delusions with which he sustains his fragile arrogance. Emma Bovary, too, lives in flattering delusions. Flaubert sustains a stance of cool contempt for her, as he does for most of his bourgeois characters, in all of his fiction. (His stance toward his protagonists in Salammbô , in contrast, is almost tender. The protagonists are barbarian warriors leading a slave revolt in the ancient Near East. Salammbô luxuriates in a voluptuous welter of vengeful cruelty on a massive scale.) Emma's death is particularly painful and ugly. Flaubert dwells on the physically repulsive details of death by arsenic.

An author's moral and ideological views often strongly influence how he or she responds emotionally to characters. Euripides evidently expects readers to disapprove of Phaedra's willingness to sacrifice fidelity to a guilty passion. Her death seems right and necessary. Virgil regards Dido as a tragic victim of historical forces larger and more important than individual passion. He sympathizes with her, but his sympathy is tinged with contempt. Trollope regards Lopez as both an outsider and a psychopathic adventurer. Lopez's self-destruction reestablishes social equilibrium and thus serves as a form of resolution. For Dickens, Merdle virtually embodies fraudulent social pretense; Dickens exults in vindictive glee over Merdle's death. Chopin seems to regard Edna Pontellier as a victim of a stifling social order—hence Edna's current status as an icon of resistance to patriarchy. James elicits pity for the death of Hyacinth Robinson and indignation against the maliciously manipulative anarchist who has placed him in an untenable position. Orwell's John Flory is intelligently appreciative of Burmese culture; he serves Orwell as a foil for the unintelligent arrogance of the British Raj. Nonetheless, Orwell registers the weakness of Flory's ego with pitying contempt. For Conrad, Winnie Verloc's passionate though “morbid” devotion to her retarded brother serves as a counterweight to the moral vacuity of the anarchists who surround her. Conrad treats Winnie's death with a combination of overstrained pathos and ironic distaste.

Tragedy requires an element of grandeur or nobility lacking in most cases of suicide for reasons of social failure, but Achebe's Okonkwo and Shakespeare's Roman protagonists are tragic figures. Okonkwo is a strong but flawed man, victimized both by circumstances and by the limitations in his own perspective. In the deaths of Cleopatra, Cassius, and Brutus, Shakespeare evokes a Roman ethos in which suicide is the only honorable conclusion to a failed political intrigue.

Mental Illness

Mental illness is a neurophysiological dysfunction that produces mental anguish (Oakley, 2007 ). Virginia Woolf suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness; rather than go through it one more time, she drowned herself. Some sense of the horror she must have experienced is captured in one of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway . Over the course of a single day, Woolf counterpoints Mrs. Dalloway's placid ruminations with the hallucinatory terror of a battle-shocked veteran suffering from schizophrenia. At the end of the story, as Mrs. Dalloway is enjoying herself at a party, he kills himself by jumping out of a window. In Maid in Waiting , John Galsworthy gets readers close to the suicidal anguish of uncontrolled bipolar disorder, before that disorder had a clinical name. Edward Ashburnham, in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier , is a slave to recurrent and irresistible romantic passions. He finally escapes by cutting his own throat. Severe clinical depression gets canonical expression in Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure . Jude is a disappointed man, morose and fearful. His oldest child, a virtual personification of clinical depression, hangs himself and his siblings. Jude eventually stays out in the rain long enough to get pneumonia, thus bringing his own misery to an end. Chief White Halfoat, in Catch-22 , uses the same strategy for ending his life.

Existential Despair

Human beings are the only species with a brain so highly developed that they can locate themselves in a cosmic scheme of things. Humans are susceptible to religious fantasies and supernatural terrors. They often need to feel that their existence has some “meaning” within the larger scheme of things. Shakespeare's Hamlet, caught somewhere in between medieval supernaturalism and modern metaphysical nihilism, yearns to destroy himself but fears the afterlife. In his closet drama, Empedocles on Etna , Matthew Arnold captures the mid-Victorian mood of metaphysical despair, translocating his own metaphysical gloom into the voice of an early Greek philosopher. After discoursing eloquently about the futility of human life, Empedocles flings himself into a volcanic crater. In the later 19th century, with the widespread loss of religious belief among educated people, the sense of existential despair became a predominating theme in literature. Conrad is particularly effective in giving voice to that theme. In Conrad's epic novel Nostromo , Decoud, a Gallicized South American patrician, is trapped in solitude on a small boat for several days. Losing all sense of purpose or meaning in life, he shoots himself and falls over the side of the boat. Conrad speaks of this death with mocking contempt, but the contempt is directed as much at himself as at his character. Decoud's perspective is a close approximation to one main aspect of Conrad's own point of view; and, indeed, Decoud kills himself by shooting himself in the chest, the same method that in his youth Conrad had adopted for attempting suicide. Aldous Huxley's futuristic utopia/dystopia Brave New World depicts a society in which life is perfectly regulated by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning. The protagonist, a “Savage” who had grown up on an Indian reservation and has thus escaped conditioning, cannot fully articulate what he feels is intolerable about such a society, but he ends up hanging himself in despair. The existential problems explored by writers like Shakespeare, Arnold, Conrad, and Huxley have not been solved; they are part of our active cultural heritage.

All in the Family

Next to one's relation to one's self, one's closest relations, genetically, are to parents, offspring, and siblings. The “ultimate” causal force, inclusive fitness, creates “proximal” feelings of psychological closeness. Blood is thicker than water, but in family dramas blood sometimes runs like water, producing in readers peculiarly intense sensations of shock and horror. Not surprisingly, in Dante's Inferno , people who commit crimes against kin are placed in the ninth circle of hell, the lowest circle.

Family violence is sometimes complex and sequential. The cycle of family violence that motivates Aeschylus's trilogy about the house of Atreus has already been mentioned: Agamemnon murders Iphigenia, is murdered in turn by his wife, Clytemnestra, who in turn is murdered by her son Orestes. Sophocles's depiction of Oedipus has also been mentioned: Oedipus murdered his father and married his mother, then in remorse gouges out his own eyes; Oedipus's daughter Antigone defies her uncle Creon and is executed by him; Creon's son, who loves Antigone, kills himself, and his mother then kills herself. In both Euripides's and Racine's versions of Phaedra's story, Theseus's wife, Phaedra, betrays her stepson; Theseus invokes the power of a god to destroy his son; and Phaedra commits suicide. In King Lear , Edmund betrays both his father and his brother Edgar. Lear's two oldest daughters, Goneril and Regan, collude in humiliating their father but then fall out over a sexual rivalry, each competing for Edmund's favor. Goneril poisons Regan, and then, when she is exposed and trapped, stabs herself to death. Edgar kills Edmund in combat, but Edmund has already ordered the execution of Lear's youngest daughter, Cordelia. After she dies, Lear dies from grief. In Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov , Fyodor Karamazov's illegitimate son Smerdyakov, inspired by the atheistic writings of his brother Ivan, murders his father. Then, feeling betrayed by Ivan, Smerdyakov kills himself, leaving another brother, Dmitry, to take the blame for the patricide.

Murdering one's own children has a peculiarly horrific effect, since it combines the revulsion against murdering kin with the revulsion against murdering children. In Flaubert's Salammbô , the worshippers of Baal are fighting off a genocidal revolt of slaves, and the war is going badly. To propitiate Baal, they burn alive all the infants in the city, flinging them one by one into the glowing belly of the great brass god. Medea, in a play by Euripides, abandons her homeland for Jason's sake; when he later abandons her, she murders their two sons for revenge. In George Eliot's novel Adam Bede , an unmarried woman, Hetty Sorrel, leaves her newborn infant to die in the woods. In William Styron's Sophie's Choice , Sophie has to choose which of her two children to sacrifice to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Later, tormented by guilt, she commits suicide. The protagonist of Toni Morrison's Beloved chooses to murder her children rather than have them returned to slavery. In King's The Shining , Jack Torrance is gradually possessed by evil spirits in an isolated hotel; under their influence, he almost succeeds in murdering his wife and child.

In fiction, murdering members of one's own family almost always has an evil cast, but evil can be contextualized in many different ways, depending on the total worldview of the writer. Greek tragedies tend to adopt a stance that hovers ambiguously between moralism and fatalism, that is, between emphasizing the consequences of behavioral choices and counseling resignation to the caprice of the gods. In Salammbô , Flaubert seems to be aiming at a purely aesthetic goal: evoking the ferocity of a barbarian culture, without judging it from a moral stance. George Eliot, in contrast, dwells on a moral theme: the opposition between egoism and empathy. She sets up a clear moral dichotomy between the vain and shallow nature of Hetty Sorrel, who abandons her newborn child, and the loving nature of the female protagonist, Dinah Morris. The three main characters in Styron's Sophie's Choice —a Polish Catholic woman victimized by the Nazis, a Jewish schizophrenic, and a descendant of Southern slave owners—offer an occasion for meditations on problematic racial and ethnic relationships. Morrison's Beloved is designed as an indictment of slavery in the American South. Dostoevsky situates Smerdyakov's patricide within the context of a philosophical debate over morality and religion. Jack Torrance in King's The Shining is a recovering alcoholic and a failed writer. His demonic possession is cast in terms of an inner struggle between egoistic vanity, fueled by alcohol, and his devotion to his wife and child. The Shining is essentially a moral drama, like Adam Bede . King Lear , too, is a moral drama. Goneril and Regan are faithless and wantonly cruel; they provide a foil for the idea of family bonds personified in their sister Cordelia.

Violence and Sex

Sexual rivals.

The biblical story of David and Bathsheba exemplifies homicide prompted by sexual desire. Greek myth is replete with instances of Hera, queen of Olympus, punishing Zeus's mortal lovers or their offspring. Lethal jealousy is a major theme also in the three great epics of the Greco-Roman world—the Iliad , the Odyssey , and the Aeneid . The Trojan War, the subject of the Iliad , takes place, ostensibly, because the Trojan prince Paris runs off with Helen, the wife of the Greek leader Agamemnon. Gottschall ( 2008b ) makes a compelling argument that this specific motive was merely the symbolic tip of the iceberg. All of Greek tribal culture in this historical period was organized around raiding for women. (Gottschall draws inspiration from Napoleon Chagnon's [ 1979 ] studies of the Yanomamö.) The Odyssey , recounting Odysseus's efforts to return home after the Trojan War, culminates with Odysseus slaughtering the suitors who had gathered around his wife, Penelope. The last half of the Aeneid occupies itself with Aeneas's war in Italy against Turnus. The ostensible occasion for the war is rivalry over the hand of the princess Lavinia. The first story in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , “The Knight's Tale,” turns on the jealous rivalry of two former friends, who fight in knightly combat until one eventually dies. In Guy de Maupassant's Une Vie , a husband discovers his wife in a tryst inside a covered cart, which he rolls off a cliff, killing both his wife and her lover. Bradley Headstone in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend tries to drown Eugene Wrayburn in jealousy over Lizzie Hexam. William Boldwood, in Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd , has a wedding party that is spoiled when his fiancée's husband, erroneously supposed dead, shows up at the party. Boldwood shoots and kills the husband. In Cather's O Pioneers! , the protagonist's brother is murdered by a jealous husband. Jean Toomer's “Blood-Burning Moon” depicts homicidal violence animated by both sexual jealousy and racial hatred; both rivals die, one with his throat slit, and the other burned at the stake by a lynch mob. Zora Neale Hurston's “Spunk” depicts a hapless wronged husband pitted against a cocky, dominant rival, Spunk, who shoots him. On the surface, Spunk seems unrepentant, but he is haunted by the murdered man's ghost, who pushes him into a buzz saw.

Sexual jealousy leading to violence, and especially male jealousy of rival males, is a human universal (Buss, 2003 ; Daly & Wilson, 1988 ; Geary, 1998 ). However, differences in cultural attitudes make a large difference in the stance authors take toward this universal disposition. From the perspective of Greeks in the barbarian period, Odysseus is wholly within his rights to murder his rivals, and along with them the serving maids with whom the suitors had had sex. In modern literature, men who resort to violence in response to sexual jealousy are seldom if ever treated as epic heroes. More often, they seem self-destructively obsessed with passions they cannot control. There are no modern literary heroes, like Odysseus, who are celebrated for murdering hordes of their rivals. Odysseus is a chief in a polygynous warrior culture. Modern heroes have to conform to the ethos of a monogamous bourgeois culture (Gottschall, 2008b ; Jobling, 2001 ).

Lovers’ Quarrels

Jealous hatred of a rival, like grief, is a simple passion. Jealousy of a lover or spouse is more likely to put intense emotions into conflict with one another. After murdering Desdemona, Othello describes himself as a man who “loved not wisely but too well” (5.2.44). In Racine's version of the Phaedra story, Phèdre is torn between jealous rage and shame; she colludes in a false accusation that results in her stepson's death, and then guilt, grief, and shame drive her to suicide. In Robert Browning's dramatic monologue “Porphyria's Lover,” the speaker has been driven insane by jealousy. After strangling his lover with her own hair, he tells himself that he has fulfilled her own wish, since she can now “give herself to me forever.” In William Faulkner's frequently anthologized story “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily has an affair with a man disinclined to marriage. Like the speaker in “Porphyria's Lover,” she kills him in order to keep him with her. Many years later, after her death, the town's folk find the lover's skeleton in a bed in her house, with a strand of her gray hair on a pillow next to it. In Honoré de Balzac's novel Cousine Bette , the fickle and opportunistic siren Valérie strings along several men at once, exploiting all of them, and is finally poisoned, along with her new husband, by one of her deceived lovers. Tolstoy, in his own life, was tormented by obsessive jealousy, a theme that figures prominently in both War and Peace and Anna Karenina . In “The Kreutzer Sonata,” the first-person narrator explains that he murdered his wife because he was enraged both by ordinary sexual jealousy and by his own enslavement to sensual passion. In Zola's La Bête Humaine , Jacques Lantier is driving a train on which his mistress is a passenger; another woman, prompted by jealous rage, derails the train, killing many people, but not the two she was intending to kill. Remorse drives her to suicide. Lantier himself, afflicted with a mental disease that couples sexual passion with homicidal fury, eventually murders his mistress. D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love pits two egoistic and dominating personalities, Gerald and Gudrun, against one another. After nearly strangling Gudrun to death, Gerald wanders away, yearning for a release from passion, and falls off a cliff.

Murder/suicide is as common in the crime section of the newspaper as it is in works of fiction. The commingling of love and hatred in works such as those just described gives readers imaginative access to the states of mind that animate such real-life behavior. Literary depictions also give us access to a range of possible attitudes toward this behavior. Racine's play is a neoclassical tragedy; it elicits responses that mingle emotions of horror and compassion. Browning's monologue creates a sensation of horror like that in some of the works of Edgar Allen Poe (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” for instance)—horror both at homicidal violence and at mental derangement. Insanity precludes the dignity and grandeur that are typical of tragic emotion, but most readers’ revulsion against Browning's lunatic is nonetheless tinged with pity. Commenting on “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner ( 1965 ) declared that his own attitude toward the story was essentially one of compassion for Emily's wasted life. Balzac's attitude toward Valérie and her lovers has an air of moral disapproval tinged with sensationalistic fascination. The first-person narrator in Tolstoy's story evokes little compassion for the wife he murdered; he wishes instead to mitigate his guilt by treating sexuality itself as a mental disease. In this story, Tolstoy not only depicts a deranged state of mind but also exemplifies it. Zola adopts a naturalistic stance—clinical, detached, empirical, fascinated by the spectacle of power out of control. At the end of La Bête Humaine , Lantier is driving a train full of drunken soldiers toward the front in the Franco-Prussian War. He gets into a fight with his stoker, with whose wife he is having an affair, and both fall overboard, leaving the train without a driver, hurtling toward disaster. Lawrence's stance in Women in Love is essentially moralistic; Gerald and Gudrun are used as foils for another couple, Birkin and Ursula, who represent, for Lawrence, a more wholesome form of sexual passion.

Killing a lover, like killing oneself or one's kin, limits opportunities to propagate one's genes. So in what way can an evolutionary perspective illuminate this kind of homicide? Two explanations seem most plausible. One is that a known disposition for uncontrollable violence can have a powerful deterrent effect (Frank, 1988 ; Schelling, 1960 , cited in Wright, 1994 , p. 278). Some people decrease their fitness by killing a mate; but many mates avoid infidelity at least in part because spurned or cuckolded lovers can be dangerous. The other explanation is that human passions are not necessarily optimized for inclusive fitness in every possible combination of circumstances. All adaptations have costs; all adaptive benefits involve trade-offs against other possible adaptive benefits; and some adaptations conflict with others. Male bears have adaptations for having sex and also for eating small animals; they sometimes eat their own offspring. Humans have adaptations for erotic fixation and also for punishing cheaters; they sometimes kill their lovers. In “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” Oscar Wilde meditates on a man condemned to hang for murdering his lover. Protesting against singling this man out for punishment, Wilde declares that “all men kill the thing they love.” The generalization stretches the point further than it will quite bear, but many people do indeed kill the thing they love; they thus also sometimes destroy themselves.

Violence Within the Social Group

Instrumental violence.

Much of the violence outside the family circle, in literature as in life, is largely instrumental in character. People harm or kill others to defend themselves or their family and friends, to obtain money or other resources, or to remove an obstacle to social ambition. Odysseus jams a burning pole into the Cyclops's eye because the Cyclops is eating his companions. Robinson Crusoe, in Daniel Defoe's novel, also kills cannibals. In Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities , the elderly and very proper Miss Pross shoots Mme. Defarge in order to protect Lucie Manette's family from the guillotine. In Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore , Nakata, a gentle old man, stabs Johnny Walker to death to stop him from torturing cats. In Crime and Punishment , Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker because he needs money; and he murders her sister to cover up the deed. In Frank Norris's McTeague , McTeague beats his wife to death over the money she is hoarding. Macbeth murders Duncan because Macbeth wants to be king, and Duncan is in the way. Claudius murders Hamlet's father for the same reason; and the future Richard III murders several people to eliminate the obstacles between himself and the throne. In Eliot's Middlemarch , Bulstrode murders Raffles because Raffles is threatening to expose his shady past and thus ruin his social standing. In Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy , Clyde Griffiths murders his pregnant girlfriend, Roberta, because she is threatening to spoil his chances of social advancement. In cases such as these, though violence might be fueled by rage or hatred, harming someone else is not the ultimate purpose of violence; harming someone else is merely a means to an end.

The value attached to instrumental violence, like the value attached to all depicted behavior, depends on the state of mind of the character, the author's stance toward the character, and the reader's response to both. The stance of the author and the reader's response are in most cases heavily conditioned by the cultural ethos of the character, the author, and the reader, but any given cultural ethos is itself only a particular organization of the elements of human nature.

Odysseus exults over defeating his monstrous enemy, and most readers rejoice with him. Miss Pross is permanently shaken by the enormity of the deed required of her, but Dickens clearly regards her as a hero and as a symbol of British moral courage. Nakata is deeply disturbed to discover his own capacity for violence but recognizes, dimly, that violence is sometimes necessary to sustain humane conditions of life. Raskolnikov, finding he cannot rationalize murder, ultimately turns himself in; remorse and redemption are the central themes of Crime and Punishment . McTeague, in contrast, does not have a moral consciousness sufficiently developed to experience remorse. McTeague is a “naturalist” novel, a genre that typically depicts characters operating at a level of mindless animal brutality. Richard III, unlike McTeague, is not a mindless brute, but he is a psychopath, and he delights in his cunning manipulations. Readers are simultaneously lured into his perspective and repelled at his viciousness. Claudius and Macbeth are more like Raskolnikov than like Richard III; they are unable to reconcile themselves to the murders they have committed. Richard III requires readers to establish their own independent moral perspective; Hamlet and Macbeth provide an internal moral monitor in the conscience of the characters. An American Tragedy , like McTeague , is naturalistic. Clyde Griffiths has a social imagination more refined than McTeague's, but he seems morally helpless before the lure of social glamour. Though planning and executing a murder, much of the time he seems baffled, frightened, and wistful. One central implication of a naturalist vision is that people are ultimately driven by forces outside their control—a conclusion that converges with the fatalistic stance in much Greek drama. The polar opposite to that stance can be located in highly moralistic writers such as George Eliot. Bulstrode in Middlemarch serves Eliot as an exemplar of a morally ambiguous nature: a man with high ideals, low ambitions, and intellectual integrity too weak to acknowledge the discrepancy between them. For Eliot, Bulstrode's morally underdeveloped mind serves as a foil for the protagonistic characters who exemplify the power of directing one's own behavior in morally conscious ways.

Dominance and Reciprocation

In addition to association by kinship, there are two basic principles in human social organization: dominance and reciprocation (Boehm, 1999 ; de Waal, 1982 ; Trivers, 1971 ; Wilson, 1993 ). In social groups not related by kinship, if violence does not serve a primarily instrumental function, it usually serves either to assert social dominance, to suppress dominance in others, or to punish transgressions against equitable behavior. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar offers a straightforward instance of dominance as a central theme. Caesar seizes dictatorial power, overthrowing the collective power of the senatorial class. In assassinating him, the senators exemplify the social dynamic delineated by Boehm (1996): collective force aimed at suppressing dominance in individuals. Suppressing dominance in individuals blends into punishing transgressions against equity. Individuals typically assert dominance by harming others; they thus violate an implicit social contract to treat others equitably.

In chimpanzee societies, sheer physical power establishes dominance. Even when weaker males form coalitions to overpower stronger males, physical strength ultimately determines hierarchical status. Two relatively weak males working together can be physically stronger than a single male who is stronger than either individually (de Waal, 1982 ). Physical power also undergirds human social relations, but human social relations are heavily regulated by norms and laws that prescribe obligations according to social roles (Hill, 2007 ). Civil society leaves little scope for individuals to assert dominance through sheer brute strength. Humans must instead use accumulated resources and acquired skills, including social skills, to establish their place in a social hierarchy. Sports constitute a partial exception. In Shakespeare's As You Like It and Achebe's Things Fall Apart , the protagonists gain prestige through victory in wrestling matches. But, then, sports are not means for dominating a social hierarchy through raw physical strength; they are forms of regulated social activity.

In most literary traditions, domestic violence—asserting individual dominance through physical force—falls outside the range of acceptable behavior. The most famous character in medieval English literature, Chaucer's Wife of Bath, takes as her chief theme the moral norm that prohibits violence against wives. In the prologue to her tale, she describes her relationship with her fourth husband, a scholar and misogynist. They quarreled; she ripped pages out of his favorite antifemale tract, and in a rage he struck her, knocking her senseless. His remorse was so severe that he conceded complete interpersonal dominance to her. She says they were very happy together after that. Her actual tale, as distinct from her prologue, is a fable illustrating the idea that men should yield domestic dominance to women.

In literature as in life, alcoholic derangement often plays a precipitating role in domestic violence. In The Dram Shop , Zola depicts the moral squalor of the alcoholic underclass in Paris. A father who gradually beats his prepubescent daughter to death is only the most poignant instance of pervasive, gratuitous violence. McTeague is drunk when he beats his wife to death. In King's The Shining , Jack Torrance reverts to alcoholism, beats his wife nearly to death, and tries to murder his son. At the time, he is under the influence of “evil spirits” in both senses of the word. The supernaturalism of the novel serves as a symbolic vehicle for depicting Torrance's losing struggle to resist his own inner demons.

Individuals in literature seldom assert dominance through sheer force, but groups often do. Racial or ethnic domination forms the theme of works such as Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe , Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin , Faulkner's Light in August , Richard Wright's Native Son , Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen , Art Spiegelman's Maus , William Styron's Sophie's Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner , and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace . Class conflicts culminating in riots with fatal consequences appear in Scott's The Heart of Midlothian , Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil , and Eliot's Felix Holt . Dickens's Barnaby Rudge climaxes in a deadly riot animated by religious strife. In A Tale of Two Cities , Dickens depicts the Terror that followed the French Revolution. In most representations of collective violence, authors sympathize with protests against racial oppression, class injustice, or political tyranny. At the same time, few literary authors give an approving depiction of mob violence.

Individuals who assert dominance through sheer physical force belong to a despised fringe in both life and literature. Using violence to gain revenge for injuries or insults is a different matter. Bullies are held in contempt, but characters who seek revenge through violence often elicit readers’ respect, if not their conscious approval.

Personal injury motivates many instances of murderous revenge. Samson is tricked, blinded, and shackled for public display. When his strength returns along with his hair, he crushes the Philistines, along with himself, under the stones of their temple. In One Thousand and One Nights , a medieval Islamic collection of stories, Sharyar, a Persian king, discovers that his wife is unfaithful. He has her executed, and then, extending his revenge to womankind in general, marries a new woman every night, executing each the next morning. (Scheherazade avoids this fate by telling Sharyar a new story each night, but leaving each unfinished until the following night.) In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , Frankenstein's monster develops a grudge against his creator and eventually kills everyone in Frankenstein's family. In Dickens's Oliver Twist , the criminal psychopath Bill Sikes beats his girlfriend to death because he thinks, mistakenly, that she has informed against him. The protagonist of Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is raped and her hopes of happiness ruined by Alex d'Urberville. She stabs him with a carving knife. In Conrad's The Secret Agent , the anarchist agent provocateur Mr. Verloc lures his wife's retarded younger brother into trying to blow up the Greenwich Conservatory. The brother stumbles en route and is himself blown to smithereens. Like Tess, Verloc's wife uses the instrument nearest to hand, a carving knife, to take her revenge. In John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath , Tom Joad kills a policeman who has just smashed in the skull of his friend preacher Casy. In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita , Clare Quilty helps Lolita escape from Humbert Humbert; in return, Humbert tracks Quilty down and shoots him multiple times. In King's Carrie , the town outcast, a teenage girl, is humiliated at the senior prom; she uses her telekinetic powers to slaughter the whole graduating class of the high school, trapping them inside a burning building.

Indignation at personal injury is a close cousin to offended pride. The protagonist of Shakespeare's Coriolanus is driven into traitorous homicidal fury by outraged pride. Iago destroys Othello because Othello has passed him over for promotion. In Edgar Allen Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado,” the narrator protagonist Montresor says his acquaintance Fortunato has casually insulted him, so he shackles Fortunato to a wall deep underground and bricks up the niche. The Duke in Browning's monologue “My Last Duchess” has his wife murdered because she shows too little regard for the dignity of his rank. In Dickens's Bleak House , the French maid Hortense murders the lawyer Tulkinghorn because he has insulted her.

Harm to kin or lovers is a common motive for revenge. Aeschylus's Oresteia consists in a sequence of vengeful murders within a single family. In Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus , Lavinia is raped, and her rapists, to prevent her from identifying them, cut out her tongue and cut off her hands. (The source story, the myth of Philomela, appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses .) Lavinia nonetheless succeeds in identifying her assailants. In the subsequent cascade of vengeful acts, the two rapists are killed, cooked in a pie, and fed to their unsuspecting mother. (The same kind of revenge appears in Seneca the Younger's play Thyestes .) Laertes in Hamlet stabs Hamlet with a poisoned rapier because Hamlet has murdered Laertes's father, Polonius. Hamlet murders Claudius, his uncle, because Claudius murdered his own brother, Hamlet's father. In one of the earliest English novels, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa , Clarissa is abducted, drugged, and raped. After she dies from grief, her uncle kills her assailant in a duel. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby , Gatsby is murdered because a man mistakenly believes that Gatsby killed the man's wife. In Denis Lehaene's Mystic River , a father murders a childhood friend because he believes, mistakenly, that the friend murdered his daughter.

Though often moralistic on other themes, many literary authors display a strikingly tolerant attitude toward revenge as a motive. Revenge looks like a basic form of justice and often gives a feeling of emotional satisfaction to readers. If that were not the case, “poetic justice” would not be so widely used as a plot device. Poetic justice occurs when “good” characters are rewarded and “bad” characters made to suffer. Judging by the relative frequency of plot structures, we could reasonably infer that readers can more easily tolerate a plot in which a “good” character comes to a sad end than a plot in which a “bad” character lives happily ever after.

Blood feuds are a special case. One murder leads to another, but the whole sequence proceeds in a senselessly mechanical way. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet result in an agreement to end the blood feud between the Capulets and the Montagues. The darkest moments in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn involve the murderous feud between the Sheperdsons and the Grangerfords. When Huck asks his Grangerford friend what started the feud, the boy cannot provide an answer, but he nonetheless falls victim to the feud. Twain clearly expects readers to register the sad futility in killing of this kind.

Death by Law

Legal execution is partly instrumental—it aims at deterrence—and partly a form of collective revenge. When it serves the purposes of “poetic justice,” legal execution can be neatly folded into the emotional satisfaction with which a story concludes. Even Billy Budd's hanging, in Herman Melville's Billy Budd , is presented as a tragic sacrifice to the necessities of naval discipline. At other times, though, legal execution is presented as the medium of a malign fate, an unjust social order, or both. At the end of Stendhal's The Red and the Black , Julien Sorel is guillotined for shooting his former mistress. He and Stendhal both seem to regard his fate as an indictment against an aristocratic social order that provides no career open to talent. When Tess of the d'Urbervilles is hanged for stabbing her rapist to death, Hardy explicitly protests against some cosmic principle of injustice. In Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men , the retarded giant, Lenny, accidentally kills a woman. His friend and protector, George, shoots him before he can be lynched. In The Grapes of Wrath , Steinbeck explicitly protests against social injustice. In Of Mice and Men , he seems less interested in protesting against injustice than in stimulating the reader's compassion for the plight of an itinerant male underclass. In Ambrose Bierce's “Incident at Owl Creek Bridge,” a Southern civilian is hanged by Federal troops. The bulk of the story consists in depicting his fantasized escape, as the rope breaks and he falls into the water under the bridge. At the end of the story, he is snapped back to reality, with a broken neck, swinging beneath the bridge. The story focuses emotional attention not on retributive satisfaction, social protest, or simple compassion. Instead, it evokes the love of life and the horror of death. It also captures the sharp contrast between the victim as a mere object, for his executioners, and his own intense inner consciousness, frantic with terror and yearning.

Human Sacrifices

Along with “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “A Rose for Emily,” Shirley Ann Jackson's “The Lottery” is one of the most frequently anthologized short stories. In a quiet farming village, somewhere in mid-century America, the local people gather for the annual lottery, selecting slips of paper from a box. The “winner,” Tessie Hutcheson, is stoned to death. Her own family members, including her toddler, take part in the stoning. Stories do not become canonical merely because they are shocking and bizarre. “The Lottery” has a deep symbolic resonance; it suggests that even within civil society, in a time of peace, there is a force that subjugates individuals and family relationships to the collective identity of the social group. The coercive power of the social group is given symbolic form also in William Golding's Lord of the Flies . A group of English school boys, stranded on an island by a plane crash, quickly revert to savagery. The three boys who retain civilized values—Piggy, Simon, and Ralph—are sacrificed to the cohesion of the savage band. In 1984 , George Orwell locates coercive social force in a totalitarian regime. At the end of the novel, the protagonist Winston Smith is being tortured by an agent of the government. To end the torture, he must betray the woman he loves, begging his torturer to hurt her rather than him. During the torture, he is required to guess the right answer to a question about what motivates the totalitarian government. The right answer, as it turns out, is a desire for power, as an end in itself. The final stage in Winston Smith's subjugation is to come to feel, sincerely, that he loves the totalitarian regime that will soon, as he knows, murder him.

The totalitarian regime in 1984 is essentially psychopathic. Its practices are a collective equivalent of the psychopathic cruelty that animates novels such as A Clockwork Orange and American Psycho . Unlike Burgess and Ellis, Orwell does not invite readers to participate vicariously in the enjoyment of cruelty. 1984 is designed to create a sense of angry outrage in its readers. It is a symbolic indictment of totalitarianism, not a peep show. In that respect, it adopts a stance similar to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's realistic depiction of the Gulag in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich . A tacit indictment of the psychopathic political culture of Stalinist Russia also informs Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate .

There are only two primate species in which coalitions of males band together for the express purpose of making lethal raids on neighboring bands of conspecifics: chimpanzees and human beings (Jünger, 2010 ; Potts & Hayden, 2008 ; Wrangham, 1999 ). This behavior has evidently been conserved from the last common ancestor shared by humans and chimpanzees some 7 million years ago, and specifically human forms of evolutionary development gave an extra impetus to coalitional violence. Early in their evolutionary history, humans gained “ecological dominance” (Alexander, 1989 ; Flinn, Geary, & Ward, 2005 ); that is, they became the dominant predator in their environments. The most dangerous creatures they faced were members of other human bands. Male coalitional violence thus became a primary selective force in human evolution. Highly organized modern warfare is an extension of the coalitional aggression that characterizes most bands and tribes in preliterate cultures.

War has figured as a main subject of literature for every phase of history, from the ancient world, the medieval period, the Renaissance and Enlightenment, to the 19th and 20th centuries. War forms the subject matter of verse epics, plays, prose fiction, and lyric poetry. Much war literature blends closely with autobiography and history: lightly fictionalized memoir and accurate historical reconstruction that includes many actual historical persons.

We have no surviving narratives from prehistory, but William Golding's The Inheritors offers a powerful reconstruction of lethal interaction between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. The Iliad and the Bible evoke the warrior ethos of barbarian cultures; and Flaubert's Salammbô , like Golding's The Inheritors , raises historical reconstruction to the level of high literary art. Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire reconstructs the Battle of Thermopylae.

The oldest surviving classic of French literature, the Song of Roland , describes an 8th-century battle in which the protagonists, like the Greek warriors at Thermopylae, are all killed. Scott's The Talisman locates its action in the Crusades. In the classic Japanese medieval epic, The Tale of the Heiki , two clans struggle to dominate Japan. A 14th-century Chinese novel, Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms , also focuses on dynastic struggles. Shakespeare dramatizes the English Wars of the 15th century. The Thirty Years’ War—the religious war that devastated Germany in the 17th century—provides the setting for Hans von Grimmelshausen's semiautobiographical tale Simplicissimus . The protagonist in Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein is a general in the Thirty Years’ War.

Eighteenth-century wars include the first and second Jacobite uprisings (rebellions aimed at restoring the Stuarts to the throne of England), the Seven Years War (the struggle among the main European powers that spread into the American continent in The French and Indian War), and the American War of Independence. Thackeray's protagonist in Henry Esmond joins the first Jacobite uprising, and Scott's protagonist in Waverly joins the second. Henry Fielding's protagonist in Tom Jones sets off to fight in that same military venture, though he never arrives. Thackeray's Barry Lyndon fights in the Seven Years War, which also forms the background to Major von Tellheim's plight in G. E. Lessing's play Minna von Barnhelm . James Fennimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans is set in the French and Indian War. In Thackeray's The Virginians , two brothers, grandsons of Henry Esmond, fight on different sides in the American War of Independence. Children's novels about that war include Esther Forbes's Johnny Tremain and James Collier's My Brother Sam Is Dead .

The Napoleonic Wars dominated European politics in the first 15 years of the 19th century. Different phases of that war figure prominently in War and Peace and Thackeray's Vanity Fair . Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series of novels and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series chronicle this period with gritty military and naval detail. Cornwell's Waterloo offers a brilliant fictional reconstruction of the Battle of Waterloo. Thackeray gives a short but rhetorically powerful description of the same battle in Vanity Fair . The protagonist in Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma witnesses Waterloo from the fringes, though without understanding the course of the action.

European wars between 1815 and 1914—from the Battle of Waterloo to the beginning of World War I—include the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, various Balkan conflicts, and the small imperial wars on the fringes of the British Empire, including the Boer War. Tennyson's poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” chronicles an episode in the Crimean War. Several of Maupassant's short stories are set in the period of the Franco-Prussian War. The protagonist of G. B. Shaw's play Arms and the Man is a mercenary Swiss soldier serving in the Serbo-Bulgarian War. Several of Kipling's early stories depict British military actions in India, what is now Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Kenneth Ross's play Breaker Morant , which provides the basis for the Bruce Beresford film of that name, is set in the Boer War.

Conrad's Nostromo depicts a South American revolution that transforms the lives of the characters, including English and Italian expatriates. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude takes up similar themes from a South American perspective.

The major American war of the 19th century was of course the Civil War, which produced a crop of contemporary novels and a steady flow of historical reconstructions, including Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage , Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels , Shelby Foote's Shiloh , and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain . Children's novels about the American Civil War include Harold Keith's Rifles for Watie and Irene Hunt's Across Five Aprils .

Among the many novels about World War I, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front holds a special place as one of the greatest of all war novels. The last scene of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain presents its philosophical protagonist charging across a battlefield in World War I, with limited prospects for survival. Henri Barbusse's Under Fire gives a French perspective on the war. American novels about World War I include Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms , William March's Company K , John Dos Passos's Three Soldiers , and Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun . British novels include Ford's Parade's End , Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon , and Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy . Some of Faulkner's and Kipling's best short stories are set in World War I. Charles Harrison's Generals Die in Bed gives a Canadian perspective on the war. For Russians, World War I merges into the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War. That period forms the background for Michail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don , Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago , and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's series of novels included in The Red Wheel . In addition to novels and short stories, the war generated a large body of fine lyric poetry by poet-soldiers such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Edmund Blunden.

World War II produced major novels in several national literatures. American novels include Heller's Catch-22 , Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead , James Jones's The Thin Red Line , Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 , and James Dickey's To the White Sea . Everybody Comes to Rick's , an unpublished play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, was the basis for the film Casablanca . The Spanish Civil War, a prelude to World War II, is the setting for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls . Colin McDougall's The Execution is the most important Canadian novel about World War II. German experience in the war forms the subject of Günter Grass's The Tin Drum , Willi Heinrich's Cross of Iron , Russ Schneider's Siege , Heinrich Gerlach's The Forsaken Army , and Theodor Plievier's Stalingrad . The greatest Russian novel of the war, Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate , is designed to cover multiple theaters of the war and to interweave politics, combat, the Holocaust, and civilian terror in the Soviet Union. Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt gives an Italian perspective on the war. British involvement in the war forms the background for Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy and J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun . Ian McEwan's Atonement reconstructs the British retreat to Dunkirk. Japanese novels about the war include Ashihei Hino's Wheat and Soldiers , Tatsuzō Ishikawa's Soldiers Alive , and Ooka Shohei's Fires on the Plain . The international order in Orwell's 1984 includes a perpetual world war.

Novels of Vietnam include Larry Heinemann's Close Quarters , James Webb's Fields of Fire , John del Vecchio's The Thirteenth Valley , and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried . Báo Ninh's novel The Sorrow of War offers a Vietnamese perspective. Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now takes the core of its plot from Conrad's The Heart of Darkness , which is set in the Belgian Congo, and transposes the plot to Vietnam. The script writer, Michael Herr, incorporates episodes from Dispatches , his own journalistic memoir about his experiences as a reporter in Vietnam.

In science fiction, war is often projected into a fictional future and extended to conflicts between humans and other species. H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds provides a prototype for this genre. More recent examples include Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers , Joe Haldeman's The Forever War , and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game .

Fantasy worlds are as likely to be riven by war as actual worlds. John Milton's Paradise Lost depicts the war in heaven between the good and bad angels. (They use cannons with gunpowder, as in the English Civil War, but to little effect, since they are immaterial beings.) J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy culminates in an epic conflict among the inhabitants of Middle Earth. Though written in the interwar period, Tolkien's account of this war looks like an eerie forecast of World War II. C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe chronicles a war in Narnia between the forces of good and evil—and indeed most fantasy wars, compared with real wars, are more easily reducible to ethical binaries. J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series culminates in a bloody battle between the protagonists, practitioners of benign magic, and the minions of Voldemort, the Dark Lord.

Though deeply ingrained in genetically transmitted human dispositions, war puts exceptional stress on men's minds. Combat elicits instinctive fight-or-flight responses but channels them into highly disciplined patterns of behavior regulated by rigidly hierarchical social structures. Shared danger creates a bond among soldiers that many describe as the most intense and intimate they have known. At the same time, war systematically dehumanizes the enemy in ways that make it easier to breach the psychological inhibition most people feel against doing violent bodily harm to other people (Baumeister, 1996 ; Grossman, 2009 ; Smith, 2007 ). Some fictional treatments of war, and some lyric poetry inspired by war, adopt emotionally simple stances: heroism and patriotism, or protest and revulsion. Most evoke an ambivalent swirl of emotions that include terror, rage, exultation, resentment, pride, horror, guilt, and self-pity. Authors seldom stand wholly outside the emotions they evoke. Readers can easily enough adopt ideological principles that either justify war or condemn it, but the conscious formulation of explicit ideological principles is not the same thing as an imaginative poise that reflects genuine emotional mastery. Psychopaths have the least difficulty accommodating themselves to the emotional challenges of war (Baumeister, 1996 ; Grossman, 2009 ). For most people, war remains a troubling and sometimes traumatic experience. The quality of that experience varies from individual to individual and from war to war. The perspectives of authors and characters are often heavily conditioned by the nature and outcome of the war. Most novels about World War I and about Vietnam register a dreary sensation of futility mingled with horror and revulsion. Novels about the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, and World War II have a much wider emotional range. The total emotional trajectory of World War II was very different for Americans, British, Russians, Germans, and Japanese. Such differences necessarily enter into authorial perspectives on the emotional significance of the violence they depict.

When we think of literature, we tend to think of quiet, civilized activity: writers sitting at a desk, pen in hand; readers sitting in poised contemplation over the pages of a book; the solemn hush of a library; the mellow leisure of a bookstore. At first glance, then, literature would seem to have little to do with violence—with men beating or raping women; people stabbing or shooting each other; individuals poisoning, shooting, drowning, or hanging themselves, cutting their own throats, or throwing themselves out of windows; or with large masses of men caught up in the frenzy of mutual slaughter. And yet, as this survey suggests, violence is pervasive in literary representation. William Wordsworth defines poetry as emotion recollected in tranquility (1800/ 1957 ). Is literary violence, then, just a form of sensationalistic emotional self-indulgence? No. Freud (1907/1959) made a great error in supposing that literature consists in wish-fulfillment fantasies. Most of the instances of violence cited in this essay are ugly and painful. Very few people have ever enjoyed watching as Cornwall gouges out Gloucester's eyes, or have felt pleasure listening to Lear's howls of grief after Cordelia is hanged. Most depictions of murder and suicide produce discomfort, at the mildest, in readers’ minds. The satisfaction of revenge and the lust of battle offer partial exceptions, but such pleasures are hardly pure. Revenge is at best a bitter satisfaction (Baumeister, 1996 ). The warriors of the Iliad who exult in a momentary victory also have a despairing consciousness that they will probably die a similar death, and soon (Gottschall, 2008b ).

The painful character of violence in literature points us toward what is, in the present author's view, the central adaptive function of the arts. We do not read stories primarily because they produce vicarious sensations of pleasure; we read them because they give us a deeper, more complete sense of the forces that motivate human life (Carroll, 2011b ). Humans do not operate by instinct alone. They have a uniquely developed capacity for envisioning their lives as a continuously developing sequence of actions within larger social and natural contexts. Affective neuroscientists have shown that human decision making depends crucially on emotions; we are not simply “rational” creatures (Damasio, 1994 ; Linden, 2007 ; Panksepp, 1998 ). Literature and other emotionally charged imaginative constructs—the other arts, religions, and ideologies—inform our emotional understanding of human behavior. The arts expand our feeling for why other people act as they do, help us to anticipate how they are likely to respond to our behavior, and offer suggestions about what kind of value we should attach to alternative courses of action.

Fictional violence delineates extreme limits in human experience. We do not necessarily enjoy reading about violent acts, but we do enjoy finding out about the extreme limits of experience. That is a kind of information for which we have evolved an adaptively functional need.

Future Directions

For many scholars and scientists, in both the humanities and the social sciences, literary experience seems hopelessly outside the reach of empirical scientific knowledge. Such scholars and scientists might acknowledge that biographical information about authors and facts about plots can be determined in a reasonably objective way. They might also acknowledge that the demographics of literacy can be assessed with the statistical methods of the social sciences. But the heart of the matter—the meaning authors build into plots and the effects such meanings have on the minds and emotions of readers—all of that, many scholars and scientists feel, must always remain a matter of vague speculation, subjective at best, fanciful or absurd at worst, in any case not accessible to scientific inquiry.

I am confident that this set of assumptions is mistaken. Outside the now obsolete behaviorist school, mental events—images, thoughts, and feelings—are the standard subject matter of psychology. Pen-and-paper tests, experimental designs with live subjects, and neuroimaging give access to mental events. Mental events also form the substance of literary experience. Mental events in the responses of readers are as accessible to empirical inquiry as any other mental events, and the responses of readers provide an opening to the intentions of authors and the psychosocial functions of literary works (Carroll et al., 2008 , 2010 ).

To make major advances in empirical knowledge about literary experience, two main changes in attitude need to occur. Social scientists need to recognize how large and important a place every kind of imaginative experience holds in human life; and literary scholars need to recognize that incorporating empirical research into scholarly study will give their research a kind of epistemological legitimacy it desperately needs. Integrating humanistic and empirical methods of inquiry will also vastly expand the scope of literary inquiry, making it possible to locate literary study in relation to multiple contiguous disciplines.

Literary meanings and effects like those described in this chapter are complex phenomena. To make them accessible to objective scientific knowledge, we have to break them down into components and devise empirical methods for analyzing each component. We should start with recognizing that literary meaning is a form of communication, an intentional meaning created by an author who anticipates responses of readers. At the base of empirical literary research, then, we need to tease apart the relations between mirror neurons, empathy, emotional circuits, and mental images (Baron-Cohen, 2005 ; Decety, 2011a , 2011b ; Rizzolatti & Fogassi, 2007 ). We also have to work out the relations between responses to actual events and “offline” responses to fiction—that is, emotional responses “decoupled” from immediate action (Tooby & Cosmides, 2001 ). Neurocognitive research on the way people process emotionally charged information will make it possible to produce empirical knowledge about the formal aspects of fiction: narrative structure, syntax and prose rhythm, word choice, modulations of tone, and symbolic imagery.

To locate neurocognitive findings within comprehensive explanatory sequences, we have to link the highest level of causal explanation—inclusive fitness, the ultimate regulative principle of evolution—to particular features of human nature and to particular structures and effects in specific works of art. Human life history theory offers the best available framework for analyzing the components of human nature (Kaplan, Hill Lancaster, & Hurtado, 2000 ; Low, 2000 ; MacDonald, 1997 ; Wrangham, 2009 ). Gene-culture coevolution offers the best available framework for understanding how specifically human mental capabilities interact with basic motives and emotions (Carroll, 2011a ). Gene-culture coevolution also provides a framework for analyzing the way specific cultures organize the elements of human nature.

A comprehensively adequate explanation of a given work of art would stipulate the character and causes of its phenomenal effects (tone, style, theme, formal organization); locate the work in a cultural context; explain that cultural context as a particular organization of the elements of human nature within a specific set of environmental conditions (including cultural traditions); register the responses of readers; identify the sociocultural, political, and psychological functions the work fulfills for specific audiences (perhaps different functions for different audiences); locate those functions in relation to the evolved needs of human nature; and link the work comparatively with other artistic works, using a taxonomy of themes, formal elements, affective elements, and functions derived from a comprehensive model of human nature.

In addition to locating individual works in evolutionary explanatory contexts, scholars and scientists must also deal with groups of works, organized by period, national literature, and features of formal organization and style (genre). These are standard categories in traditional literary research, and for a good reason: They constitute conventions within which authors encode meanings and readers decode those meanings. All such traditional categories of literary scholarship should now be studied with an eye toward generating explanations integrated with principles of human life history and gene-culture coevolution.

Evolutionary study tends toward an emphasis on human universals. That is an indispensable starting point. It gives access to basic motives and basic emotions. Identifying cross-cultural regularities makes it possible to isolate the elements that enter into complex cultural configurations. But the particular character of those cultural configurations does in fact substantially alter the quality of lived and imagined experience. We are only just beginning to understand gene-culture coevolution at a rudimentary theoretical level (Carroll, 2011a ). To advance in our understanding, we need highly particularized studies of specific cultural moments focusing both on macro-structures of social dynamics (Turchin, 2007 ) and also on the neurophysiological character of experience within given ecologies (Smail, 2008 ). Cultural analysis is a necessary middle level in literary research.

The study of individual identity is yet another level at which literary scholars need to work. They have to understand individual differences in personality as those differences apply to authors, characters, and readers. Evolutionary psychology took a wrong turn, early on, in deprecating the adaptive significance of individual differences (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990 ). That wrong turn is now being corrected (Figueredo et al., 2005 ; Nettle, 2007a , 2007b ). That correction will make the evolutionary standpoint much more valuable both to psychologists studying live subjects and to literary critics studying fictional subjects (Johnson et al., 2011 ; McCrae, in press ).

Substantial progress has already been made in many of the research areas recommended here (Boyd, 2009 ; Boyd, Carroll, & Gottschall, 2010 ; Carroll, 2011a , 2011b ; Gottschall, 2008a , 2008b ). But in truth, we have only just begun. In physics, “dreams of a final theory” involve integrating the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity (Weinberg, 1992 ). In all areas that concern human behavior, integrating the humanities and the social sciences presents a similarly fundamental challenge. The opportunities are immense. Violence is only one topic within the broad field of evolutionary literary research, but it is such an important topic that advances in understanding literary violence will almost certainly open out into generalizable principles across the whole range of human behavior.

Most of the literary works mentioned in this chapter are available in multiple editions, and many are available in multiple translations. Literary works are not included in the following list of references.

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Violence Against Women in Fiction

Four of us writers were critiquing each other’s novellas which all happened to have female protagonists. Three of the protagonists were victims of sexual assault, which then caused these characters to suddenly and completely change. One of those protagonists became mentally unbalanced and faded away, another was rescued by a man, and the third became a kind of vigilante, exacting revenge. These three characters happened to perfectly align with three tropes in fiction that I had recently been thinking a lot about.

According to Allison Graham-Bertolini in her book Vigilante Women in Contemporary American Fiction , the female vigilante is a relatively new character type. She says that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries female characters who were abused and oppressed were relegated to mental illness or suicide, rather than revenge. Two notable examples Graham-Bertolini sites from this era are The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath, both of which have female protagonists responding to systemic and individual oppression by slowly losing all sense of reality and all sense of self. My friend’s protagonist, who is raped and then begins hallucinating, seemed to speak directly to this first trope.

The second story, that of a female character who is a victim of violence and is then rescued or avenged by a male character, is a trope that is well documented and still very prevalent in storytelling across all genres, ranging from the over-the-top post-apocalyptic movie Mad Max to the critically acclaimed, and quietly methodical The Secret in their Eyes (in which the same woman is avenged by two men). Though, in contrast to these two examples my friend’s narrative focused on the victim’s story rather than on her rescuer’s—which could be seen as a kind of progress.

The third story, with the woman who is raped who then seeks revenge, is representative of a story type that has become more common in the last several decades. From Thelma and Louise to Jessica Jones , more women in fiction are depicted as seeking revenge for violence against them or those they love, often by causing violence of their own. Though the inciting incident of these vigilante narratives is an act of violence against a woman (which is the same as the Women in Refrigerators trope I discussed before) the woman also becomes her own heroine. She gets to climb back out of the fridge and kick some butt.

Though this final example is in many ways a sign of progress, that women are more than just victims, there is still something problematic in these vigilante stories. Most often these female characters begin as quite passive—she’s characterized as being a good girl, a pretty girl, a daddy’s girl. She might still live at home with her parents and it’s repeatedly stated that she doesn’t really know what she wants from life. Then, one day, this good girl becomes the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a male character. This act of violence transforms this passive woman into a revenge-seeking vigilante who must work outside of the law to get justice. I’ve found this pattern over and over again, from well-respected writers to relative unknowns, within literary and genre fiction. In a recent New Yorker Fiction podcast Jonathan Franzen described a female rape victim-turned-killer in a story by David Means as, “passive and potentially redeemable,” which could describe the character arcs of nearly all female vigilantes I’ve discovered.

For me the problem is not that sexual violence against women is so often represented in fiction, it’s that these women have so little character before their assaults. I think fiction can perform an important role in raising awareness to this kind of violence, but must sexual violence become the central event in the lives of so many female protagonists? Must it define them? Yes, women are often victims of violence, but what else are they? I happen to think that women are complex, difficult, ambitious, and hilarious, that they have goals, plans, and flaws, and most importantly, they have agency at every point in their lives.

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About Author

I have won Granta's One Sentence Story Competition, The Kenyon Review's Short Fiction Contest, Literary Death Match and London StorySlam. I have also been shortlisted for the BBC's International Radio Playwriting Competition, and The Paris Review's Flash Fiction Competition. My work has been published by Tin House and selected for performance by London's Insignificant Theater and Liars' League: London, Hong Kong, and New York. My play, REX, has been published and produced several times in the US. I am currently pursing a Master's Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, while living with my husband in Stockholm, Sweden.

Essays About Violence: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Violence is a broad topic and can be sensitive for many; read our guide for help writing essays about violence.

The world has grown considerably more chaotic in recent decades, and with chaos comes violence. We have heard countless stories of police brutality, mass shootings, and injustices carried out by governments; these repeating occurrences show that the world is only becoming more violent.

Violence refers to the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy . From punching a friend due to disagreement to a massacre of innocent civilians, a broad range of actions can be considered violent. Many say that violence is intrinsic to humanity, but others promote peace and believe that we must do better to improve society.

If you are writing essays about violence, go over the essay example, and writing prompts featured below. 

Are you looking for more? Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

1. Videogames, Violence, and Vulgarity by Jared Lovins

2. street culture, schools, and the risk of youth violence by lorine hughes, ekaterina botchkovar, olena antonaccio, and anastasiia timmer, 3. violence in media: no problem or promotes violence in society by albert miles, 4. my experience of domestic violence by ruth stewart, 5. a few thoughts about violence by jason schmidt, writing prompts on essays about violence, 1. what is violence, 2. different types of violence, 3. can social media cause people to be violent, 4. is violence truly intrinsic to humankind, 5. causes of violence, 6. violence among the youth, 7. race-based violence.

“Parents allow themselves to be ignorant of the video games their children are playing. Players allow themselves to act recklessly when they believe that playing video games for ten, twenty, or even thirty hours on end won’t have an adverse effect on their mental and physical health. People allow themselves to act foolishly by blaming video games for much of the violence in the world when in truth they should be blaming themselves.”

Lovins discusses the widespread belief that video games cause violence and ” corrupt our society.” There is conflicting evidence on this issue; some studies prove this statement, while others show that playing violent video games may produce a calming effect. Lovins concludes that it is not the games themselves that make people violent; instead, some people’s mental health issues allow the games to inspire them to commit violence.

“The risk of violence was not higher (or lower) in schools with more pervasive street culture values. Higher concentrations of street culture values within schools did not increase the likelihood of violence above and beyond the effects of the street culture values of individual students. Our results also showed that attending schools with more pervasive street culture values did not magnify the risk of violence among individual students who had internalized these same values.”

In this essay, the authors discuss the results of their study regarding “street culture” and violence. Street culture promotes toughness and dominance by using “physical force and aggression,” so one would think that students who embrace street culture would be more violent; however, the research reveals that there is no higher risk of violent behavior in schools with more “street culture”-following students. 

“We have had a violent society before media was even around, and violence is just in our nature as human beings. Those who happen to stand against this are deceived by society, due to the fact that we live in a dangerous world, which will stay this way due to the inability to create proper reasoning.”

Miles writes about people blaming the media for violence in society. He believes that government media regulations, including age-based ratings, are sufficient. If these restrictions and guidelines are taken seriously, there should be no problem with violence. Miles also states that violence has existed as long as humankind has, so it is unreasonable to blame the media. 

“It was when I was in the bath, and I looked down at my body and there were no bruises on it. None at all. I was shocked; it was the first time I had lived in a non-bruised body in many years. I don’t know if any other women who got out of violent situations felt their moment. The point at which they realised it was over, they could now get on with recovering. I promised myself that I would never stay with a violent partner ever, ever again. I have kept that promise to myself.”

Stewart reflects on her time with an ex-boyfriend who was violent towards her. Even though he kept hitting her, she stayed because she was used to it; her mother and stepfather were both violent during her childhood. Thankfully, she decided to leave and freed herself from the torture. She promises never to get into a similar situation and gives tips on avoiding staying with a violent partner. 

“I went back and replayed the burglar scenario in my head. Suppose I’d had a gun. When would I have pulled it? When he ran out of the apartment? What were the chances I would have killed him in a panic, without ever knowing he was armed? Stupidly high. And for what? Because he tried to steal someone’s TV? No.”

In his essay, Schmidt recalls an instance in which a man pulled a gun on him, threatening him with violence. He chased a burglar down the street, but the burglar pulled a gun on him, leaving him stunned and confused enough to escape. Schmidt was so bothered by the incident that he got his own concealed carry permit; however, after reading statistics regarding gun accidents, he decided to reject violence outright and pursue peace. 

As stated previously, violence is quite a broad topic, so it can be challenging to understand fully. Define the word violence and briefly overview some of its probable causes, how it manifests itself, and its effects. You can also include statistics related to violence and your own opinions on if violence is a good or bad thing. 

There are many types of violence, such as domestic violence, gun violence, and war. List down the commonly occurring forms of violence and explain each of them briefly. How are they connected, if they are? To keep your essay exciting and readable, do not go too in-depth; you can reserve a more detailed discussion for future essays that are specifically about one type of violence.  

Social media is quite explicit and can show viewers almost anything, including violent content. Some sample essays above discuss the media’s effect on violence; based on this, is social media any different? Research this connection, if it exists, and decide whether social media can cause violence. Can social media-based pressure lead to violence? Answer this question in your essay citing data and interview research.

Many argue that humans are innately violent, and each of us has an “inner beast.” In your essay, discuss what makes people violent and whether you believe we have tendencies towards violence. Be sure to support your points with ample evidence; there are many sources you can find online. 

Violence arises from many common problems, whether it be depression, poverty, or greed. Discuss one or more causes of violence and how they are interconnected. Explain how these factors arise and how they manifest violence. With an understanding of the causes of violence, your essay can also propose solutions to help prevent future violence.

Youth violence is becoming a more severe problem. News of school shootings in the U.S. has set public discourse aflame, saying that more should be done to prevent them. For your essay, give a background of youth violence in the U.S. and focus on school shootings. What motivates these school shooters?  Give examples of children whose upbringing led them to commit violent acts in the future

Another issue in the U.S. today is race-based violence, most notably police brutality against African-Americans. Is there a race issue in policing in America? Or do they target offenders regardless of race? Can both be true at the same time? You decide, and make sure to explain your argument in detail. 

If you’d like to learn more, in this guide our writer explains how to write an argumentative essay .Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this Grammarly review .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Fiction - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Fiction refers to literature created from the imagination, not based on fact. Essays on fiction might explore various genres, the elements of storytelling, or the ways fiction can reflect or challenge societal norms. Other topics might include the analysis of narrative techniques, the history and evolution of fiction, or the impact of fiction on cultural or individual perception. Essays could also delve into discussions on the boundary between fiction and reality, or the role of fiction in philosophical or ethical debates. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about Fiction you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Is the Great Gatsby Historical Fiction?

Historical information about the period of publication: The Great Gatsby was published in the twenties and the book takes place in the twenties. In the 1920's Jazz was upcoming and very popular. Jazz clubs were very popular, and many people would come in some pretty cool outfits. Also in 1920 the 19th amendment was ratified and gave women the right to vote. In 1928 Hoover is elected president and creates the slogan a chicken in every pot, a car in […]

Global Warming: Fact or Fiction

Introduction: Global Warming is the theory that the atmosphere of the earth is gradually increasing as a result of the increase in levels of greenhouse gases and pollutants being released. Since the Industrial Revolution, Earth's global average temperature has increased by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (The World Counts, 2014). There are generally two opinions regarding the argument of global warming: those who believe it is occurring and those who do not. People who believe in the issue back their opinions up […]

Medieval Romance “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

Medieval romance is a type of literature first made popular in the 12th century by various medieval writers. These works were often characterized by a strong idealization of the code of chivalry and the main heroic protagonist, along with supernatural elements, creativity, a fairytale setting, a simple plot often revolving around some sort of quest, and other similar items. Based on this understanding of the genre, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" can be considered a prime, perfect example of […]

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Dystopian Science Fiction Film “The Hunger Games”

The Hunger Games is a dystopian science fiction film based on Susan Collins novel of the same name. I love this film because it is set in a scary futuristic fantasy world. Directed by Gary Ross, The Hunger Games film has a leading strong female character that raises above all odds. The films main characters are Jennifer Lawrence who plays Katniss Everdeen and Josh Hutcherson who plays Peeta Mellark. The film is set inside the Panem country consisting of 12 […]

George Orwell’s Fiction Novel 1984

With new technology and advanced programs, the government is gaining more power than one may realize. George Orwell’s fiction novel 1984, depicts Oceania’s control upon it’s party members thoughts and freedom showcasing the harsh effects that it had on its population. Too much control can often lead to social repression, Winston being a product of this repressed society. The cruelty Winston is faced with serves as both a motivation for him throughout the novel and reveals many hidden traits about […]

Point of View in the Odyssey and Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song”

Have you ever heard just one side of a story without hearing the other side? Ever wondered what's going through the villains mind? The sirens are described as bird like creatures that are beautiful and deceitful. The sirens prey on the most strong and heroic heroes that are also very gullible. Homer in “The Odyssey” and Margaret Atwood in the “Sirens Song” give different portrayals of the sirens through their point of view and tone. The point of view of […]

Fiction Story “The Hunger Games”

The Hunger Games is an exciting fiction story written by the author Suzanne Collins. The dystopian novel was published in 2008 by Scholastic. It's told in first person point-of-view by narrator and protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, as she recounts her personal history and experiences in a mostly stoic yet occasionally emotional tone. The setting takes place in about a hundred years in the future in the country Panem, created after the North American government collapsed. The structure and style of the […]

Artificial Intelligence Fiction Vs Reality

Artificial intelligence has been a topic discussed in popular culture for decades, despite its relatively recent appearance in the robotics industry. In 20th-century films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Terminator, sentient machines are most commonly portrayed as being cold, unfeeling killers who invariably turn on their creators to fulfill their own nefarious goals. The metallic antagonists of these films, HAL 9000 and Skynet, were created to serve humanity, but once they gained “sentience”, that purpose faded away […]

Symbols and their Meanings in “Heart of Darkness”

Symbols are a common literary device used by authors. Some authors use symbols to make the readers think and find the deeper meanings. Other authors use symbols to help tie together different parts of the story. In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad many symbols are shown to the readers throughout the literary work. Three of the major symbols the author uses in this book are the color black, the color white, and buzzing flies. In the book Heart of […]

“Dragos Tenter” Fiction Paper

The Oscars, the Emmys and the Tonys are awards given to the best of the arts. Literature is an inspiration for TV programs and Broadway plays. There are four nominees for the Best American short story of all time. The nominees are “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The winner is “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman […]

Gender Wage Gap: Fact or Fiction?

“Women and minorities make significantly less than their counterparts” (Ramnarain). A quote by an author of the Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justices written recently five years ago. She uses the word significantly, a word that impacts a statement of a huge difference in pay between a male and a female. Two people doing the same job, are getting paid significantly less. Is that fair? In 1960, there were many doctrines to produce change in workers discrimination. A huge step […]

Essay the House on Mango Street

A twelve year old girl named Esperanza is the main character of the the “House On Mango Street.” Esperanza was a shy but very smart girl, she dreamed of the perfect house to live with her family. She wanted this because her parents told her about a nice house that they will get if they win a lottery and it was a story that her mom told her before she goes to sleep. Throughout the novel cisneros displayed many use […]

The American Dream, Fact or Fiction?

The American dream is an idea held by an abundance of people in the United States of America that with hard work, courage and determination one can achieve prosperity. These were morals held by plentiful early European settlers and have been passed on to many generations. What the American dream has become is a question often under discussion. In the 20th century, the American dream had its obstacles. The Depression caused a lot of difficulties during the late Twenties and […]

Fiction on Stage: Unraveling the Roles in ‘The Phantom of the Opera’

Musical sensation "The Phantom of the Opera," helmed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, has enthralled audiences throughout the globe with its iconic music, exciting drama, and eerie romance. The musical, which is based on the Gaston Leroux book, tells a story of love, passion, and mystery while taking place at the opulent Paris Opera House. The characters are essential to the tale because of their nuanced roles and interactions. This article examines the complexity and dynamics of the primary characters in […]

Flowers for Algernon: a Thought-Provoking Odyssey into the Depths of Human Potential and Ethical Conundrums in Science Fiction

Within the expansive universe of science fiction literature, Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon" stands as an exceptional work that delves into the profound theme of human potential and the intricate ethical dilemmas that accompany scientific progress. This literary gem firmly belongs to the category of mind-stirring science fiction, offering readers an intellectual voyage into the intricacies of the human psyche and the moral complexities woven into scientific exploration. In this essay, we navigate the enduring originality of "Flowers for Algernon" […]

Resilience and Magic Unveiled: Cinderella’s Fiction Enduring Cinematic Legacy

Cinderella, a tale woven into the fabric of our collective imagination, has left an indelible mark through its cinematic adaptations, each iteration infusing the classic story with a unique essence while preserving its timeless charm. In 1950, Disney's animated masterpiece, "Cinderella," danced onto screens, casting a spell with its captivating animation and unforgettable melodies. This rendition painted the tale of Ella, a gentle-hearted soul enduring hardship under her stepmother's tyranny, before a magical transformation orchestrated by her fairy godmother changed […]

Dark Romanticism

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality” (Edgar Allan Poe). Dark Romanticism is a literary movement that made waves that still resonate today within modern horror and pop culture, from Frankenstein to Dracula many recognizable names came from this era of writing. From the subjects covered by the many influential authors of the era to how it still has a place within modern writing, Dark Romanticism, a writing movement that began in […]

Exploring Historical Fiction: ‘Al Capone does my Shirts’ and its Narrative Depth

The book "Al Capone Does My Shirts," written by Gennifer Choldenko, is an unusual combination of young adult and historical fiction, set in the 1930s on Alcatraz Island. This article discusses the problems the book tackles, how a young kid sees life on Alcatraz, and the novel's value in fusing historical details with a coming-of-age tale. The protagonist of the book is twelve-year-old Moose Flanagan, who relocates to Alcatraz Island when his father secures a position as a prison guard. […]

Unspoken Justice in Fiction: Analyzing ‘A Jury of her Peers’

"A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell is a gripping short tale that explores the nuances of justice, empathy, and gender roles in early 20th-century America. The narrative, which is adapted from her play "Trifles," is a nuanced but powerful indictment of cultural conventions and the intellect and compassion that women too often lack. The goal of this article is to analyze the complex relationships in "A Jury of Her Peers," looking at its reflections on gender, social justice, […]

Fiction and Heartache: Delving into the Plot of Madame Butterfly

Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly" is a poignant narrative that intertwines themes of love, cultural clash, and tragic self-sacrifice. Set in Nagasaki, Japan, in the early 20th century, the opera tells the story of a young Japanese woman, Cio-Cio-San, and her ill-fated romance with a U.S. naval officer, Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton. This essay delves into the intricate plot of "Madame Butterfly," exploring its emotional depth and the cultural context that shapes its tragic trajectory. The opera opens with Pinkerton, stationed […]

“The Sign of the Beaver”: a Fiction about Survival and Cultural Exchange

"The Sign of the Beaver," a novel by Elizabeth George Speare, published in 1983, offers a nuanced exploration of survival, friendship, and cultural exchange in early American history. Set in the 18th century, the story follows a young boy, Matt, who is left alone to guard his family's newly built cabin in the Maine wilderness. The narrative evolves into a profound tale of survival, understanding, and respect as Matt forms an unlikely friendship with Attean, a Native American boy from […]

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Short Stories

In many of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, he develops his characters to have either a spiteful or evil attribute for more of a symbolic meaning to the story. Many people can interpret that Hawthorne uses evil in his stories. In the story "" Rapaccinni's Daughter”, he uses his daughter Beatrice, as his scientific project that turns her into poison which causes her to stay trapped inside without leaving the house. In "" Young Goodman Brown"" the character Faith is a […]

Buffalo Bill: Fiction’s Disturbing Reflection of Reality

It's no secret that popular culture has a way of drawing inspiration from real-life events, turning them into fiction, and serving them up as entertainment for the masses. One of the more chilling examples of this is the character "Buffalo Bill" from Thomas Harris's novel, "The Silence of the Lambs." The character, brought hauntingly to life by actor Ted Levine in the film adaptation, is a twisted figure who leaves an indelible mark on the psyche. Yet, the most harrowing […]

Rebellion in Serenity, a Science Fiction Movie

"Serenity" is a science fiction movie that tells the story of the crew aboard the spacecraft 'Serenity' and a pair of siblings who discover the secret of the Alliance's rule and resist it. Although the movie is named 'Serenity', this is an irony expressed in the plot of the movie. There is no absolute serenity and peace in the world. What a serene world needs is a ruler who can provide a free and happy land for everyone. This is […]

Summary of the Main Fiction Books

  Emily Grierson lived in her southern town as the richest woman. In solitude, she lived alone before her death. As a young woman, she was regarded too good enough for any of the men that fancied her according to her dead father. Later in her life, Emily found true love with Homer Barron, a suspected homosexual by the town because he was more interested in the men than Emily Grierson. After Homer's disappearance, Emily bought arsenic. Suicide was talked […]

The Significance of Memory in ‘The Giver’: Exploring Themes of Identity

In a literary work, themes are crucial and often the universal ideas explored. In the book The Giver by Lois Lowry, the author uses various themes to bring out his story. The author is inspired by personal experience to bring out some of the themes of in the story. One of the most crucial themes in the book is the importance of memory when it comes to human life. The importance of memory is a clear theme that Lowry uses […]

Analysis of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness is Conrad's shortest, greatest, and highest achievement. It is considered as one of the best short novels that are written English. It is something between a short story and a novel; therefore it can be called a 'novella'. It was first published in 1899, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, a popular journal of its day in London. Heart of Darkness is based on Conrad's personal experience to the Congo region of West Africa. The novella is a kind […]

“Wuthering Heights” and “Rebecca” Analysis

Not every romantic novel is about true love. Books such as Wuthering Heights and Rebecca are far from being romantic. From romance comedies to gothic romance, the novels have plots that are quite different from the normal storyline. These novels are more mysterious and full of suspense. Clearly, authors Daphne du Maurier and Emily Brontë wanted a romantic plot that was unusual and unexpected from readers. Luckily, many people who read either Rebecca or Wuthering Heights were quite surprised with […]

Comparing and Contrasting Darkness in Poe’s ‘Cask of Amontillado’ and ‘Raven’

Edgar Allen Poe one of the greatest American poets to ever have been around. The stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Raven” are typically seen as dark and mystical pieces of literature. Both stories consist of a few major similarities such as the tone and the way the stories ended. With the few similar qualities they both have a few ways that they are different like the rhyme scheme and the difference in diction. In “the Cask of Amontillado” […]

Review of Criticism

“Heart of Darkness” is a very unique story in which it has a much deeper meaning and impact to society, than people actually might think. Throughout its time of release, many readers have had different interpretations on what message it tried to convey. In the story, one of the significant moments was when Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells a lie to The Intended. However, several critics have discussed, that what Marlow says to The Intended about Kurtz’s last words is […]

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How to Write an Essay About Fiction

Understanding the elements of fiction.

Before writing an essay about a work of fiction, it is essential to understand the fundamental elements that make up a fictional piece. Fiction, in its various forms such as novels, short stories, or novellas, is narrative writing drawn from the author's imagination. Start your essay by discussing the key elements of fiction: plot, character, setting, point of view, theme, and style. Explain how these elements work together to create a cohesive and engaging story. It's also important to consider the historical and cultural context in which the work was written, as this often influences the themes and perspectives presented in the story.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong essay on a work of fiction should be centered around a clear, concise thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about the piece. For example, you might analyze the development of a central character, explore the significance of the setting in shaping the story, or interpret the underlying themes and their relevance to contemporary issues. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and provide a structured approach to your analysis.

Gathering Textual Evidence

To support your thesis, it's crucial to gather evidence directly from the text. This involves close reading of the work to find significant quotes, passages, and examples that align with your thesis. If discussing a theme, identify parts of the text that illustrate this theme. If analyzing a character, choose examples of actions or dialogues that reveal something significant about that character. This evidence strengthens your argument and shows your deep engagement with the text.

Analyzing Literary Techniques and Themes

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing the author's use of literary techniques and how they contribute to the themes or overall impact of the story. Discuss the author’s style, use of symbolism, narrative techniques, and character development. For example, if examining a novel, you might explore how the author's use of descriptive language creates vivid imagery or how the narrative structure contributes to the development of the plot. This analysis demonstrates your understanding of literary techniques and their function within the story.

Concluding the Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing your main points and restating your thesis in light of the discussion. Your conclusion should bring together your insights into the work of fiction, emphasizing the significance of your findings. This is also an opportunity to reflect on the broader implications of the story, such as its impact on literature or its relevance to readers today.

Reviewing and Refining Your Essay

After completing your essay, review and refine it for clarity and coherence. Ensure that your arguments are well-structured and supported by textual evidence. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers, teachers, or literary enthusiasts to further improve your essay. A well-crafted essay on a work of fiction not only showcases your understanding of the text but also your ability to critically analyze and discuss literary works.

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Some people think that the fictional violence portrayed on television is harmless entertainment. Others disagree and think that it encourages violent behaviors. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Writing9 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Include an introduction and conclusion

A conclusion is essential for IELTS writing task 2. It is more important than most people realise. You will be penalised for missing a conclusion in your IELTS essay.

The easiest paragraph to write in an essay is the conclusion paragraph. This is because the paragraph mostly contains information that has already been presented in the essay – it is just the repetition of some information written in the introduction paragraph and supporting paragraphs.

The conclusion paragraph only has 3 sentences:

• Restatement of thesis
• Prediction or recommendation

To summarize, a robotic teacher does not have the necessary disciple to properly give instructions to students and actually works to retard the ability of a student to comprehend new lessons. Therefore, it is clear that the idea of running a classroom completely by a machine cannot be supported. After thorough analysis on this subject, it is predicted that the adverse effects of the debate over technology-driven teaching will always be greater than the positive effects, and because of this, classroom teachers will never be substituted for technology.

Start your conclusion with a linking phrase. Here are some examples:

• In conclusion
• To conclude
• To summarize
• In a nutshell

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Some believe that people should make efforts to fight climate change while others think it is better to learn to live with it. Discuss both views and give your own opinion

Some people say that the best way to improve public health is by increasing the number of sports facilities. others, however, say that this would have little effect on public health and that other measures are required. discuss both these views and give your own opinion., recent years, the number of crimes committed by young people in major cities throughout the world is increasing. discuss this issue. give reasons and suggest some solutions., the best way to improve health is to exercise daily. to what extent do you agree., fatherhood ought to be emphasized as much as motherhood. the idea that women are solely responsible for deciding whether or not to have babies leads on to the idea that they are also responsible for bringing the children up. to what extent do you agree or disagree.

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Some people think that the fictional violence portrayed on television is harmless entertainment. Others disagree and think that it encourages violent behaviour. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

IELTS essay Some people think that the fictional violence portrayed on television is harmless entertainment. Others disagree and think that it encourages violent behaviour.

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‘Butcher’ Tells the (Mostly) True Story of a Very Bad Gynecologist

Through the lens of a 19th-century doctor, Joyce Carol Oates explores gothic medical horror.

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BUTCHER, by Joyce Carol Oates

There are many things one could note about Joyce Carol Oates’s long writing career — including, most strikingly, its legendary prolificness. Gifted with a protean talent, she has shifted with ease from one literary genre to another, be it novels, short stories, memoir, poetry, children’s books, essay collections, plays or librettos.

To the envy, admiration and annoyance of less fluent authors, Oates has clearly never suffered from writers’ block. When she is not writing in longhand, she is busy on X and Substack, airing her opinions on Donald Trump and the events of the day. For a time she also wrote suspense under two different pseudonyms.

Indeed, there is something almost compulsive, verging on the hypergraphic, about her need to write. It seems to come to her as readily as breathing, and leaves one wondering whether she ever stops long enough to brew a cup of tea. (One of her few diversions is running.) Now 85, Oates shows no sign of slowing down: “Butcher” is, by most accounts, her 63rd novel, and the book has the feverish energy, narrative propulsion and descriptive amplitude — sometimes to excess — of much of her earlier work.

Even when Oates isn’t writing in an explicitly Gothic mode, as she did in “Bellefleur” (1980) or “My Heart Laid Bare” (1998), she has always been interested in intimations of the sinister, the way it suddenly hoves into view on an ordinary summer day. “At the periphery of many of my poems and works of fiction, as in the corner of an eye,” she once observed in an essay, “there is often an element of the grotesque or surreal.”

The title of “Butcher,” the very starkness of it, gives a clue to the lurid, bloody tale Oates has in store. Like several previous works (her seminal 1966 short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” and the 1992 Chappaquiddick reimagining “Black Water,” for example), it is inspired in part by real figures who committed real crimes — including, in this case, an undertrained doctor named J. Marion Sims, who in the 1840s began performing experimental surgeries on women recovering from difficult childbirths.

Here, the “Butcher” of the title is now called Silas Aloysius Weir, who for 35 years oversees the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics, where conditions range from abysmal to horrifying. His medical instruction is minimal, consisting of only four months of training at an inferior school, though he is happy to tell everyone that he comes from a distinguished family (one of his uncles is a renowned astronomer at Harvard, from which two brothers have also graduated; Weir seems to be the bad egg).

Silas becomes heralded and then ultimately detested as a pioneer in the field of gyno-psychiatry, through which misogynistic scrim he views the vagina as “a veritable hell-hole of filth & corruption” and the female genitals as “loathsome in design, function & aesthetics.”

It is a time when the seat of hysteria is thought to be the uterus, and pesky clitorises — “the offensive little organ at the mouth of the vagina … like a miniature male organ, with an obscene fire lit from within” — are held accountable for obstreperous behavior in young women and snipped without a second thought. Various ailments are treated, without aid of anesthetic, by scalpel and sometimes a shoemaker’s awl, and the most frequent cure-all is phlebotomy, or bloodletting (“ When in doubt, bleed ”), even if in many cases it causes death. The arsenal of drugs includes laudanum, foxglove, mercury, belladonna, “small quantities of arsenic” and cocaine drops.

“Butcher” is told by different narrators, all of whom cast alternating lights on Weir and his God-given (or so he believes) commitment to the patients in his care. From the start, we are given a sense of his unease and unattractiveness: “His head was overlarge on his stooped & spindly shoulders; his stiff-tufted hair of no discernible hue … his eyes rather deep-set in their sockets, like a rodent’s eyes, damp & quick-shifting.” (Reading, I wondered whether a rodent’s eyes are, in fact, deep-set; from the little I have spotted of them, their eyes seemed flat against their heads. But that is a quibble.)

When his use of a pair of pliers to reposition a 5-month-old’s cranial plates results in the infant’s death — even though he relieves his guilt by noting her “very poor stock, virtually subhuman” — Weir is forced to leave his community. Shortly thereafter, he is called to the asylum, where, relying on the assistance of an experienced midwife, he delivers a baby for an orphaned albino Irish servant named Brigit, who is also purportedly deaf and mute. (The child, naturally, is immediately taken from her.)

Eventually, Brigit becomes his assistant, and Weir becomes obsessed with her otherworldly beauty — “Those staring eyes! The faintest blue, uncanny” — believing that there is a special unspoken communion between them. One of those men whose ignorance is matched by his arrogance, he hopes to achieve worldwide fame by finding a way to cure madness by literally cutting it out of the body, and as the novel proceeds, his approach becomes only more brazen. He uses a tarnished tablespoon for intimate examinations as well as heated forceps, confident in his knowledge that “the interior of the vagina is known to be insensitive to sensation, like the birth canal. There are no nerve endings in these organs.”

His ambitions seem limited only by what he can achieve in a series of increasingly depraved experiments, conducted in his private laboratory. Finally, though, the inmates revolt, in a scene that Oates delineates with grotesque specificity. “Butcher” is undoubtedly one of her most surreal and gruesome works, sparing no repulsive detail or nefarious impulse.

In the end, though, the purview of the novel is larger than one might think, becoming an empathic and discerning commentary on women’s rights, the abuses of patriarchy and the servitude of the poor and disenfranchised. Oates, as is her wont, succeeds in creating a world that is apart from our own yet familiar, making it impossible to dismiss her observations about twisted natures and random acts of violence.

My prevailing question about Oates is where her imaginative fantasies derive from, which has always seemed a mystery to me. We don’t get a sense of who she is behind her writing the way we do with, say, John Updike, John Cheever or Alice Munro . But this unyielding impersonality may be the way that she wants it: In the same essay collection I quoted from earlier, she offers, “Elsewhere I’ve stated that JCO is not a person, not even a personality, but a process that has resulted in a series of texts.”

We have become so used to the notion of the recognizable auteur blazing through the artifice of fiction and calling attention to his or her self that Oates’s approach — not dissimilar from the novelist Gustave Flaubert’s insistence that “an author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere” — feels like a singularly uncommon one. Long may she run.

BUTCHER | Joyce Carol Oates | Knopf | 352 pp. | $30

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Books | Mystery fiction reviews: Violence simmers in…

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Books | mystery fiction reviews: violence simmers in two gripping debuts.

Alejandro Nodarse delivers a confident, hard-boiled debut about gentrification, family ties, Cuban-American culture, and the changing landscape of Miami with a deep tour of the Everglades in the gripping neo-noir “Blood in the Cut.”

“Blood in the Cut” also looks at a young man seeking redemption for his criminal past while grappling with who he is and how prison has changed him.

Ignacio “Iggy” Guerra has just been released from prison after serving three years of a drug sentence. The 23-year-old’s parole was “compassionate release” because his mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident about two weeks earlier. But his father, Armando, refused to tell his oldest son until a couple of days ago so that Iggy would miss his mother’s funeral.

Iggy’s home in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood has never been happy, ruled by “sharp tongues and sharp knives.” But now chaos dominates his family, exacerbated by Armando’s erratic behavior, for whom “grief and sorrow had bled into panic and rage, pushed . . . to the brink of violence.”

Armando is drowning in debt, and blames Iggy for the family’s money woes because of his legal bills and, in a way, for his mother’s death. But the precarious finances go deeper, with the family butcher shop barely staying open and Armando taking sketchy, illegal jobs for a local criminal who has a ranch in the Everglades. Iggy’s younger brother Carlos may have to drop out of college to help pay the bills. And his mother’s pharmacy, a landmark of the neighborhood, has been razed to make way for a pompous, entitled rival who is building an upscale butcher shop and restaurant.

Iggy desperately wants to prove that he has changed and save the family business, but his father won’t speak to him or even look at him. The debt is so massive Iggy may have to work for the local criminal, who is specializing in illegal game hunting in the Everglades.

Nodarse delivers an in-depth look at how development transforms neighborhoods at the sacrifice of family-owned businesses. The butcher shop is more than a store, it is central to Iggy’s family — his father and brother, of course — but also to the extended Guerra family united in trying making the store survive. This is a butcher shop, so Nodarse unflinchingly includes several graphic scenes of the staff processing the meat, including illegally killed game. The Guerra family history parallels that of the Miami neighborhood where they settled.

Grief permeates “Blood in the Cut” in different ways. Armando channels his into emotional abuse directed at his sons, “lost in his loss.” Iggy, who was close to his mother, and Carlos mourn their mother, making their actions a tribute to her memory.

Nodarse vividly uses the South Florida setting with such an authentic look at Miami that readers will want to visit these neighborhoods. The Everglades especially emerges as a character, as beautiful as it is dangerous, where “even the grass can hurt you.” The Everglades terrain is constantly changing — “continuous contraction and expansion of the landscape felt like breathing.”

“Blood in the Cut” is an intriguing hard-boiled novel introducing a new talent in Nodarse.

Meet the author

Alejandro Nodarse will discuss “Blood in the Cut” with Miami author Raquel V. Reyes, author of “Barbacoa, Bomba, and Betrayal” at 8 p.m. June 5 at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables, 305-442-4408, booksandbooks.com . The discussion is free but reservations are requested.

Out for revenge

‘Smoke Kings’ by Jahmal Mayfield. Melville House, 400 pages, $20 

Jahmal Mayfield delivers a bold, provocative and at times uncomfortable debut that sharply looks at race, loyalty and the consequences of revenge in the action-packed “Smoke Kings.”

Set during 2017 and 2019, “Smoke Kings” revolves around political activist Nate Evers and his three friends who decide to avenge the racially motivated murder of his teenage cousin. They plan to kidnap the descendants of those who committed hate crimes, then force them to make reparations to the victims’ family.

The foursome calls themselves Smoke Kings, a term used in a W.E.B. DuBois poem. The plan seems to work until Mason Farmer is hired to find them and extract another form of justice.

Mason is a white, former Birmingham police detective. The group seems to be getting away with their plan until they accidently kill the brother of a white supremist leader.

Mayfield infuses “Smoke Kings” with moral questions about bigotry, violence and revenge, thoughtfully not supplying any easy answers. “Smoke Kings” introduces a new talent in Mayfield.

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June 6, 2024

Current Issue

Counting the Dead in Gaza

June 20, 2024 issue

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In response to:

Is Israel Committing Genocide? from the June 6, 2024 issue

To the Editors:

My article “Is Israel Committing Genocide?” [ NYR , June 6] cited numbers of the dead and wounded in Gaza, including the number of women and children killed, as reported by the United Nations. Shortly after the article went to press, reports circulated that the UN had changed the source on which it relies for fatality statistics in the territory. The total number of deaths reported remained the same, but the UN stated that the Gaza Health Ministry had not yet established the full names and identity numbers of more than 10,000 of those killed. It therefore distinguished between the total death toll (35,233 people as of this writing) and the number of identified victims (24,686 people), only specifying the number of women and children included in the latter. The ministry is still trying to collect information about the remaining victims from morgues and hospitals across the territory.

Given the circumstances in Gaza, it is understandable that collecting this information is very difficult. Many hospitals in the territory are not functioning. It will take time to see whether there is a significant disparity between the information initially reported and the final figures.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also entered the discussion about numbers by asserting that Israeli forces had killed roughly 14,000 Hamas combatants and 16,000 civilians. He did not say how he obtained this information. In most armed conflicts, at least two or three times as many people are wounded as are killed. That is reflected in the figures reported by the ministry, and that is what one would expect in a war in which many deaths are attributable to the bombing raids that have devastated Gaza. If Netanyahu is correct about the number of Hamas combatants Israel has killed, the combined number of dead and wounded combatants would probably exceed the number that Israel has claimed are in the territory. Israel should declare victory, and the war would be over.

That Israel has decided to continue the war raises questions about Netanyahu’s figures. His use of such figures evokes memories of the Vietnam War, during which American military commanders, including General William Westmoreland, regularly claimed that Vietnamese who were killed, including many civilians, were Viet Cong combatants. This helped to create the illusion in some circles that America was winning the war, until it was lost.

As I pointed out in my article, Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights groups have been barred from operating in Gaza during the conflict by the Israel Defense Forces. Their exclusion has substantially limited our knowledge of what is taking place in Gaza. One of them, the Israeli organization B’Tselem, has provided what I believe to be reliable statistics on past conflicts. Its inability to operate in Gaza during the current conflict has eliminated that source of information.

Aryeh Neier New York City

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