Maybe I'll Redeem The Worst Of Us

Anyway, who decides which characters deserve redemption?

In recent communication with my agent, and in reflecting on various beta reads I’ve done over the years, I’ve started thinking about redemption arcs. Which characters’ redemption arcs will the reader stamp with approval? And who is just too bad for the reader to find their redemption arc compelling?

This question gets right to the heart of a theology of fiction writing. Because as Christians, we believe God can redeem anyone. But God doesn’t always make for good fiction, since he is so real, and readers may not want everyone to be redeemed.

For me, it’s a fraught question in which I must balance truth as I view it in the abstract with my intercessory role in coming alongside the reader—a role that suggests the need to make truth experientially palatable.

Only the small questions, as usual. : )

Let’s start with the easy stuff: antagonists that give us the feels, even if those feels are partly ambiguous and we still ultimately hate them.

Antagonists who elicit pathos

In Amazon’s Man in the High Castle show, I don’t necessarily want Obergruppenführer Smith to be redeemed, but I will certainly watch him go about his business with great interest—especially after he euthanizes a Nazi doctor to save his son.

Likewise Hap, the villain in The OA. He truly seems to wrestle with guilt over imprisoning the protagonists, but he can’t seem to let them go. He is the antagonist, for sure, but he elicits more pathos, at least from me, than any villain who never doubts his diabolical choices.

In both cases, the story as a whole certainly doesn’t advocate on behalf of these antagonists. They’re both still bad. The lines are clear, even as the narratives humanize their baddies.

Of course, these two examples aren’t protagonists. Is there some fundamental rule of fiction that antagonists should never be redeemed? Would the whole story just go poof at that point?

I don’t know. But from a theological perspective, we know Satan isn’t getting redeemed. He’s getting the lake of fire. And that satisfies our desire for justice.

But let’s talk about protagonists. How bad can they be and still deserve redemption?

Will readers allow a writer to redeem a bad protagonist?

In beta-reading a manuscript some time ago, I encountered a character who was clearly set up for a redemption arc. The author wanted me to care and even desire that path for the character, but I didn’t. I just found the character tiresome and deserving of their plight. He clearly despised well-meaning people around him rather than simultaneously appreciating those people and struggling to accept their shortcomings. This turned the beta read into a chore.

I’ve seen this protagonist before, both in other unpublished manuscripts and in published works. Sometimes the character is a true antihero, and the writer intends them that way. Other times, we’re supposed to grouse alongside a stinker because the world and other people are just so bad. In the second case, when a narrative holds up this type of character and peddles their redemption arc, I get turned off. I don’t care if they get redeemed, even as I claim (as a Christian) that no redemption is too huge, no redeemed person too wicked originally, to make their redemption unjust. Maybe this is one place where the quality of my moral capacity diverges from that of God. And maybe it’s a place where good fiction must, of necessity, diverge from good theology.

But what about the character who was horrible, has reformed their ways, and is still seeking ultimate redemption? Should they get it?

Can the writer redeem a protagonist with a terrible past?

In my own work, I’ve received feedback from my agent that a character of mine has too evil of a backstory to receive the redemption arc that I had for her. This character had already turned from her terrible past, and now she was trying to stop things set in motion by her past. She was clearly a positive moral actor now. But my agent seemed to think that readers wouldn’t agree with me that this character was worthy of redemption.

This came as a surprise to me, because as the author, I find her arc interesting and sympathetic, even as I had no interest in following the redemption arc of a pretty bad character in the beta read I mentioned.

What does this mean? Am I trying to have it both ways? Does it mean that I, as an author, know the depths of my own depravity better than any reader and want a redemption arc for myself that no reader would ever dare grant me?

That I, as a reader, can’t follow an author to the depths of their own depravity which they’ve written into a nasty character whom they want to give a redemption arc—the same kind of arc that I might want to give as an author, and an arc given for the same reasons?

Are we that separated by sin, that unlike God, that whether we’re creating or enjoying fiction, we reserve the right to control the definition of acceptable redemption relative to our own moral self-interest?

Maybe we are. And maybe that limits what we can write.

Accommodating the reader’s inherent moral relativism and self-interest

Perhaps, as writers, we must accommodate the reader’s desire to have it both ways. Perhaps we must grant to the reader moral scales that are tilted in their favor, allowing the reader to hand down the final moral judgment on every character. This may even be part of our intercessory role as writers.

Perhaps without that accommodation, that sop to the reader’s moral vanity, the author can’t actually connect with the reader on a spiritual and emotional level. Perhaps that’s just how limited and unlike God we really are.

But if that sop is necessary, how can fiction ever challenge or disarm the reader morally? Or should it never challenge the reader’s desire to have the moral scales tilted in their favor?

One notion arises: Perhaps this fundamental divide is also the one that’s mapped in the difference between so-called literary work and genre or escapist fiction. Perhaps the literary-critical stuff gets a pass for sticking a thumb in the reader’s moral eye. Perhaps the escapist stuff had better just stick to affirmation of the reader’s moral proclivities. Maybe it’s the difference between a vacation and a work trip.

As a writer, I find myself wanting to use the whole range of the moral symphony both for and against the reader. I want to affirm where I choose to affirm, and I want to reserve the right to offend and contradict. I want my readers to escape into hard work and disorientation, if only for a season. Only the diligent need apply here. I want readers with meaty minds—and who want mind-meat.

Maybe I’ll reserve the right to redeem the worst of us.