Scared of the dark?

Yesterday and today at work, two things got me thinking.

First, today, I had a conversation with someone who is frustrated with the tendency to  try and make superheroes "darker." I share this frustration.  It annoys me.  I know the theory; the thought is that darkness plus angst equal depth.  They don't. In fact, I think the opposite is true.  More on this later.

The other incident was yesterday, when I came across an edition of Lord of the Flies, one of my favorite books, with an introduction by Stephen King.  He describes it as the book that rendered all of the other "boys' books" he'd been reading "obsolete," because it told the truth about what would happen if real boys were stranded on a paradisical island: They'd turn to monsters.

Wait, what?  I just said the darkness equation annoys me!  But Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books?   I've never found a conflict there.

It is absolutely, one hundred percent fact that Golding was dead on about what would happen if you crashed a load of kids on an island together.  Flies is a book that rang with truth for me, from the second I read it in English class.  The human capacity for evil, sadism, and pure asshattery to fellow humans is well-documented and indisputable.  (Well, I guess you can dispute it -- you can dispute anything; free speech -- but I'm not likely to trust your judgment afterward.)  The boys' books Golding was responding to flatly lie about this, and what makes Flies so shocking is that he simply destroys that lie by telling the truth.  Put a group of humans of any age in an environment with no controls, and you're going to get Castle Rock.  (Not the one from King... well, that one, too, I guess.)  There will always and forever be a Jack Merridew, who gleefully embraces this dark side of human nature.  No society is exempt from it.  Golding himself wrote, in an afterword, "[T]he shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable." 

And here's the thing: Lord of the Flies isn't the story of Jack Merridew at all.  It is the story of Ralph, Simon, and Piggy (self, heart, and mind).  Why?

Because Jack is boring.

Yes, Jack's actions drive the story, but Jack himself is more or less predictable.  He does what we know someone is going to do.  He's not conflicted about it (maybe he has a twinge when Roger kills Piggy, but that seems more about the threat to his power), and he forms the most basic society humans know -- rule of the fist.  It's undeniably true that this would happen.  As Dumbledore puts it in Harry Potter, he's faced with a choice between what's easy and what's right -- which is so often the case -- and he chooses what's easy.  Evil, generally speaking, is easy.   You can tart it up with plans and machinery and strategies, but the basic choice of, "I will stand up for what's right" vs. "I'll get mine and screw the consequences" is, um... well, easy.  And therefore, not interesting.

The interesting characters are the dwindling group of boys who know this is wrong, the ones who hold their feeble lights in the darkness.  Simon is most explicit about this, naturally.  He's soul and heart, and he never wavers. He also doesn't look away, which is possibly the most important thing about his character.  He looks the Gorgon in the eye, understands who the Lord of the Flies is, and tries to get through to the others.  Naturally, they kill him.

Piggy is more common. He tries to doggedly stick to his logic, even as the most basic of his axioms fall apart around him.  He even tries to evade blame for Simon's death after the feast, by blaming it on the dance and calling it an accident.  But he's never tempted to Jack's camp. He just becomes more and more confused by what's happening, as symbolized by his disintegrating glasses.

It's in Ralph that Golding achieves his most impressive character.  By the end, he's almost mute, running away from the gang, but after Simon's death, he has inherited the mantle of clear sight.  He says it out loud to Piggy: "That was murder."  He understands the full depth of depravity that they've fallen into.

And he keeps fighting.

Because that is also true, and far more interesting.  Darkness just exists.  Light is an action.  You can pull drapes to block light, or go underground.  But a single lit match is the point of focus in a dark room.  Golding's society depends on the ethical nature of the individual... and Ralph is able to pass the test.  While there is always a Jack, there's also always Ralph -- often standing to the side, mute and horrified, but sometimes taking action.

That's the interesting part of a story. Right there, that's the good stuff.

Which brings me back to the superhero stories.

Yes, they're silly.  Yes, the evil is overblown.  And no, it's not bad for them to have foibles.

But the interesting thing about them is the way they fight for what's good, when all of their power would make them very, very powerful bad guys.  The first Captain America movie addressed this directly -- that the serum enhanced everything about the person who took it.  Steve Rogers is a good man who wants to do what's right.  Red Skull... isn't.  And Red Skull?  Kind of boring.  But Steve is interesting, as he tries to hold a light up in the dark, against those incredibly powerful forces in the world.

That's why I think the Darkness Equation is bunk, and why it annoys me to no end.  Yes, there are temptations, and yes, they may be more powerful as the person gets more powerful. (I generally believe that the greatest strength is often interchangeable with the greatest weakness.)   But it's in fighting the dark that people achieve real nobility, in holding up that torch no matter how swallowed by shadows it seems to be, and no matter how difficult it becomes.  That's why the heroes are the heroes -- because that's what can hold a story together.

There's a wonderful scene at the end of the movie The Neverending Story, when Fantasia has been destroyed, and the Childlike Empress appears to Bastian, holding a single grain of glowing sand.  "Why is it so dark?" Bastian asks.  She tells him, "In the beginning, it is always dark."  Then she puts the light into his hands.

Then it devolves into a kind of silly fantasy sequence, but I got the point.

The beginning of a hero story should be dark.  Downright dystopian.  Then the hero holds out his hand, and grasps the light.  That's what heroes are for.