In Midnight Nation,
JMS gives us another sympathetic devil, one who claims he’s working for the
benefit of mankind against a cruel and bored God. God created misery, to add drama to what
would otherwise be boring bucolic bliss.
The Devil claims he’s trying to overload the system, cause it to have a
fatal collapse to force God into a better version of creation. It’s actually a believable motivation. After all, how many real world monsters
turned to violence and genocide to create a “better tomorrow”?
But what makes it more than just a plausible series of lies
are the tiny glimpses of regret we see.
There are hints of love between him and God’s champion, Laurel. He tells her that what he misses most about
Heaven was being with her. He begs her
to just say no, as he did, rather than obey orders marching her down an endless
path of torture and death. He bitterly
observes that this is how God punishes him.
By putting the two of them in conflict and forcing him to choose between
obedience to an unfair Deity or hurting someone he cares about.
JMS’s extraordinary talent is creating characters which defy
shallow stereotypes. His bad guys are
not simply evil. They’ve made a series
of choices, some of which the audience can sympathize with. His good guys are not universal heroes, they
make mistakes and bad choices. They all
get caught up in circumstances beyond their control, in conflicts between
ideals and practicality, in selfish desires and foolish hopes. And yet, he doesn’t fall into the trap of
moral ambiguity. The choices the bad guys
are making are still wrong. But the
internal struggle is clear, redemption is possible, no matter how “bad” the
character.
In Babylon 5,
there is an episode called “Summon the Inquisitor” in which one of the
characters must make a choice. Hold to
personal ideals, the belief that they have a destiny to fight great evil and
achieve universe-changing things, or save a single life in the darkness, alone
and unsung, forgotten by history. This
is the same choice God is offering the Devil.
He can set aside his world-quest and return to obedience, return to
heaven. And all he has to do is spare
the life of the champion, who he loves.
Or he can continue his battle against God and accept Laurel as a
necessary casualty. It’s not explicitly
laid out in the story, but I think it’s a valid interpretation.
Could you sacrifice a life to change the world? Does the end justify the means? It’s a choice JMS returns to frequently in
his work and he’s had characters come down on both sides of the question. We praise and honour some self-sacrifice,
like someone giving up their seat on a lifeboat, or the rather obvious example
of Jesus. But we abhor the
self-sacrifice of suicide bombers. It’s
not a simple black and white question.
And that’s what makes the stories, and the characters, interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment