Oscar Wilde has said “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” Surely, however, he was quite wrong. Any story that intentionally leads a person to imagine themselves doing something morally reprehensible and enjoying it, or imagining that there will be no consequence for those who do such things, is a bad story. Indeed, those who are concerned with educating the next generation (whether parents or teachers) ought to pay careful attention to how a given story treats virtue and vice. In any given story, if it is rightly to be praised as a “good” story, virtue ought to be presented as praiseworthy and vice as blameworthy. Some will, of course, see this statement as nothing more than puritanical or moralistic but it is neither; it is eschatological. Insofar as a story corresponds with truth it will either portray virtuous characters as receiving their just praise and the wicked ending in ruin or it will leave the reader knowing that this is what should have happened in a just world.
The Lord of the Rings is a great example of a story presenting the praiseworthiness and reward of its virtuous characters. From Aragorn who faithfully serves and protects the vulnerable hobbits at great jeopardy to his own well being (and is in the end acknowledge by his people as their true king and shepherd), to Samwise who loves his friend faithfully and walks through fire with him (and then comes home to claim the love of his life, Rosie), to an Elf and a Dwarf who overcome the prejudices of their races (to be rewarded with the blessing of unending friendship), there are so many examples of virtue well praised. The virtuous deeds of all of these characters receive honor in the book and the reader even gets to see a just end to their many labors. Even Boromir, though he temporarily succumbed to vice, is revered with honor for doing what is right in the end. As Pippen recounted to the Steward of Gondor,
‘The mightiest man may be slain by one arrow,’ he said; ‘and Boromir was pierced by many. When last I saw him he sank beside a tree and plucked a black-feathered shaft from his side. Then I swooned and was made captive. I saw him no more, and know no more. But I honour his memory, for he was very valiant. He died to save us, my kinsman Meriadoc and myself, waylaid in the woods by the soldiery of the Dark Lord; and though he fell and failed, my gratitude is none the less.’
In these examples readers experience the good of self-sacrifice, the good of strong and courageous leadership, and the good of righting wrongs.
Compare The Lord of the Rings with Dune, on the other hand, and you will see a story that, while well written in so far as diction and imagination go, falls far short of the ideal of a good story. No one in the story is particularly virtuous. The main character, Paul, is at best simply not as bad as the Harknonnen clan who are indeed despicable in every way. By the end of the book you see Paul in an ongoing sexual relationship with a woman whom he will not marry (for political reasons) and taking as a wife the emperor’s daughter (whom he will deny the rights of marriage because of his love for the one he will not marry).
She looked at Chani. “And for the royal concubine?” “No title for me,” Chani whispered. “Nothing. I beg of you.” Paul stared down into her eyes, remembering her suddenly as she had stood once with little Leto in her arms, their child now dead in this violence. “I swear to you now,” he whispered, “that you’ll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire.” “So you say now,” Chani said. She glanced across the room at the tall princess. “Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident. They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine—never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.
This is just one example of the twisted ethics presented in the story and yet, presumably, the reader is supposed to think of Paul as a kind of messiah-like hero. Dune, as well liked as it is, and as well written as it is, is a bad story because it leaves the reader in a position where he or she feels compelled to praise a character who is not worthy of praise. To some extent excuses to persist in vice, when it is inconvenient to be virtuous, have been introduced to the imagination. What modicum of virtue may be seen in Paul is always overwhelmed by his compromises with wickedness. Being the least bad is hardly the same thing as being a praiseworthy hero.
It is not the case, however, that a story is bad simply because it has a main character who is full of vice. In fact, a vicious main character can be a positive good in a morally praiseworthy story. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is a prime example of a story wherein a main character becomes despicably vicious while the story itself is virtuous and praiseworthy. In fact a major feature of the story is watching a young woman lose her innocence and make mistake after mistake, just to double down and make even more evil decisions. Anna Karennina is a story about a young woman coming utterly undone by her poor choices and, in the end, throwing herself in front of a train.
And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the train the day she had first met Vronsky, and she knew what she had to do. With a rapid, light step she went down the steps that led from the tank to the rails and stopped quite near the approaching train. She looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the screws and chains and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first carriage slowly moving up, and trying to measure the middle between the front and back wheels, and the very minute when that middle point would be opposite her. "There," she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the carriage, at the sand and coal dust which covered the sleepers— "there, in the very middle, and I will punish him and escape from everyone and from myself." She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was too late; she missed the moment. She had to wait for the next carriage. A feeling such as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her was torn apart, and life rose up before her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. "Where am I? What am I doing? What for?" She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. "Lord, forgive me all!" she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering something was working at the iron above her. And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.
At no point in reading this story is the reader in any danger of thinking what Anna is doing is good, right, or to be imitated. The reader might experience some real sorrow on behalf of this tragic self destruction but they will also, in the end, acknowledge that sustaining the course she did could have led to nowhere else but a terrible end. The moral imagination is then fueled towards virtue by a story about vice.
What would make the same story bad? Imagine Anna Karenina living the same life she does in the story, making all the same choices, and ending up pleased with herself in the end, praised by all her acquaintances, all the while showing no remorse. This would not be a fitting end to her descent into depravity and it would be patently bad literature. It would, in fact, be a lie because it is not possible to follow the path that Anna does and end up happy in any meaningful sense of the word. In reality, the life of self-absorbed pleasure seeking without repentance always ends in destruction. Tolstoy’s genius is allowing the reader to safely walk that path with Anna and see its proper end at the train station. He does this without damaging the soul of the reader while still offering them an appropriate warning of the end of such a life.
Other examples of this same kind of appropriate treatment of vicious living include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and the excellent short story by Willa Cather called Paul’s Case. Each of these, in their own way, show what an unbridled pursuit of pleasure and material wealth lead to, namely, despair. It is a fundamental quality of good literature that the pursuit of vice is seen to ruin those who seek it.
Virtue is to be praised and vice censured. The truth is that everyone already knows this. People cannot help themselves. Even when a people are themselves wicked they know what is good and right when they see it and often praise it. They even largely acknowledge the just end of the wicked. They praise the hero who risks his life for the vulnerable and they boo and hiss at the self obsessed egomaniac killing due to his own lust for power. Cognitive dissonance allows evil people to applaud and scorn appropriately all while failing to see themselves in the proper light. But enough repeated exposure to good stories will at least help them on the path to recognizing vice in their own life and it will aid them in gaining a desire for virtue. That desire is the first step to virtue, followed by chosen practice, eventually resulting in settled habits.
Great stories have a balming effect on the soul. The reader will see virtue, praise it, and long for it. He will see vice, loathe it, and want to be free of it. He will look in the corners of his own heart and want to be more like Aragorn and Sam and less like Anna and Gatsby. In truth most of us can really only hope to be Boromir but, if so, then let us by all means be Boromir.
I think this is a good description of the kinds of moral effects literature can have on us, but I also think it's interesting how few stories really satisfy these criteria. The Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, the Oresteia, and Aristophanes (the entire corpus), as far as I can tell, all fail it. Oedipus Rex and the Antigone might pass. Medieval lit is pretty debatable as well, depending on how wholesome you find Dante's dedication of his epic to the love of his life (not his wife...), and consigning his enemies (including living ones) to hellfire. Much of Chaucer won't make the cut, including his milder stories like the Knight's Tale. I have my doubts about Sir Gawain, but Beowulf might make it.
My point is, when we desire for our students to be well educated in literature, we are basically desiring their exposure to a whole lot of unwholesome literary models per these criteria (and I think we would have Augustine on our side on this point). Even parts of the Bible might not pass this test, or at least it's pretty ambiguous. Does the biblical narrative ever clearly pass judgment on Abraham for endangering his wife's chastity, or completely clear up the question of whether massacring the Hivites was just retribution for the rape of Dinah? Not as far as I can tell. Even Lot's daughters don't receive any explicit comeuppance that I can discern. The Bible seems to often prefer a starkly realistic narrative, rather than anything like a moral tale.
So, where does that leave us? Is it worthwhile to read literature that sets a bad moral example? Or should we cut the reading list down to the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and a few others?
Yes, Boromir. Although we are redeemed through Christ, let us at least have at the foe here on earth as an example to the little ones we love.