quillori | Redemption Arcs

I fear this post could be entitled In Which I Hopelessly Muddle Thorny Ethical Problems With Narrative Tropes. On the other hand, there are bullet points! They don't make anything clearer, but still.

I was reading a couple of posts on what could be done with the respective villains on two different shows, where the available options appeared to number two: he remains a villain (can be killed off if no further use for his brand of villainy) or he can be redeemed (and killed off). It struck me I truly do not like conventional redemption arcs. The character concerned suffers for a while and then, for the worse acts of villainy, can get the final points towards his redemption by dying in some suitable fashion. But in what sense does this actually redeem him? I suspect I just haven't internalised the right Judaeo-Christian worldview for this sort of thing to work for me. Without a heaven or hell, without a God to judge or forgive, without the status of sinner or saved, the supposed redemption seems to hover unsupported in the air.

I think maybe what I particularly don't like is suffering as a narrative necessity? For a start, it's predictable hence boring if you don't feel there's emotional truth to it. I'm very fond of inevitable unhappy endings where I accept the truth of them: I believe there are situations where no option is right, where there is a moral cost to whatever you do; that there is generally a price for every choice; that the standards you live by can leave you with no way to turn; that we all die in any case. So I am more than happy with Oedipus putting out his eyes in horror, with Achilles trading life for glory, with Ajax killing himself. I feel these stories make a fair, though terrible, point about the way things are. I don't feel the same way at all about suffering for redemption.

I don't believe that villains necessarily do suffer in real life, and I am not even sure that it's their duty to make themselves suffer, or to hand themselves over for punishment, even where someone else may have the right to demand it. This means that I'm not nodding along with the story, feeling that it's saying something true about the way things are, I'm just bored, thinking yes, wracked with guilt, check, lots of suffering, check, doubtless about to sacrifice his life, if I know what's going to happen why am I reading this? There is a difference between stories I accept as dealing with some inevitable truth, where I am interested in watching how the characters struggle against or accept their fate, and merely knowing what's going to happen because I recognise where the story is going.

So, here is your conventional redemption story

The villain, realising he's been in the wrong, is wracked by guilt and longing to be redeemed, suffering both from this and from anything else the author throws at him. If he started off as a proper villain, he probably can't manage to be both fully redeemed and alive at the same time.

I am much happier with types of redemption that have a clear within story definition. There are all sorts of stories where, even if he ends up dead, the villain can potentially have achieved something defined: he can have lived up to his own moral standards, behaved honourably in his own or someone else's eyes. So you have

The villain, realising he's been in the wrong, decides it's his responsibility to make amends to those he's injured.

The villain, realising he's been in the wrong, tries to get back his own good opinion of himself.

The villain, realising he's been in the wrong, tries to earn back the good opinion of someone he admires or of society, or to feel that he is worthy of someone else's good opinion.

The villain, realising he's been in the wrong, feels he needs to live up to extra high standards in the future.

These are still stories that could be said to be about some sort of redemption, but unlike the first type I don't mind them at all, provided that they aren't really just stories of the first type with a half-hearted attempt to give the villain some motivation. In other words, the villain may or may not suffer, may or may not end up dead, but these things are determined solely by factors within the story, and not by an overall narrative shape that demands them as the price of redemption.

Then there are stories I also like, where I suspect I have parted company totally with those who like redemption arcs

The villain, realising he's been in the wrong, just decides to do things differently from now on.

The villain doesn't think he's been in the wrong, but does think circumstances have now changed, so he decides to do things differently from now on.

The villain, realising he's been in the wrong, abandons his current concerns to go off and to become an ascetic recluse / be a wandering monk / think deeply on this dark life / become a philosophy professor (modern version for benefit of atheists).

I love the last version. Maybe he can show up later with wise advice and a shiny new understanding of metaphysics! I suspect this is where the people for whom a redemption arc works are saying ‘But … but he just walked away! How can he do that? He hasn't been punished at all.' And I shrug, because no, he hasn't, and unless one of his victims catches up to him, he probably won't be, but so what? In what sense would it be better if he were? (That's an actual question there. I would be interested to hear from those who think it would be better and can explain why. Bear in mind there are two potential questions here. One is a matter of general ethics, whether you are required to punish yourself. The other is a writing question about how stories should work. Answers to either or both welcome. As are any versions of the villain switching sides I've missed.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Can I agree with you in part?

On the one hand, to the "why do redeemed villains have to die in the end?" - my God, yes, exactly! I was reading an interview with a show creator recently where he said (re the team member who had betrayed his leader, and then died nobly to save him), that there was no other end to his arc. Well, really, why not? Why shouldn't he fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the guy he betrayed and risk their lives together? Why shouldn't it be complicated and difficult for a long time? Dying is just a really easy end to a redemption arc - everyone gets to feel sad, and noone has to deal with the real consequences of what happened. Also, killing your villains, redeemed or not, is a simple way to up the body count and prove the danger without any real cost.

On the other hand, on the side of the "well apparently I absorbed more Juedo-Christian worldview than I thought", I get the need for suffering.

He hasn't been punished at all.' And I shrug, because no, he hasn't, and unless one of his victims catches up to him, he probably won't be, but so what? In what sense would it be better if he were?
For me, it kind of feeds into the redemption. Which makes me way more of a sadist than I realised. It doesn't have to be suffering, but it's as good a proof as any? Guilt would be another, but it's easier to fake. It doesn't actually, really, need to be suffering in the tortured and abused sense. Suffering for a purpose, in a "taking the hard/dangerous/better way because I'm a different person now", tends to be a part of my redemption arcs. But then I'm an atheist who's also a lapsed Presbyterian - we're big believers in salvation through suffering!

(Maybe it's just that the good path is normally the hard one? I think generally it's easier not to be good, so when the villain's redeemed, as readers, we need some proof of that? If they're redeemed without that, it seems like the authorial standpoint is that they could have been good all along if they'd just bothered, rather than it being a positive, difficult choice?) Okay, that's enough babbling all over your journal...

One of the most interesting versions of this to me (though the show itself wasn't always interesting) was Xena: Warrior Princess, mainly because here was an example of a character introduced as a villain (in Hercules), then given an entire show devoted to the idea of her struggles with/against "redemption". Intermittently, there'd be people who showed up who remembered her from her villain days--people who hated her, loved her, were created by her--and we'd have flashbacks to her villain days (giving us a chance to see her fierce, free and unrehabilitated). What I liked best about Xena when they were working her right is that none of her villainous qualities ever really went away--she was still nasty, wry, prone to want to solve things by force and/or charm, more than occasionally driven by her crotch, etc. But she retained a vague sense that there were other ways to live, and emulated them mainly because she had someone else right next to her (Gabrielle) to whom living like that came naturally, which it never did for her.

See, now I've always thought I should investigate Xena if only for the pretty, and you're not really discouraging me here.

But she retained a vague sense that there were other ways to live, and emulated them mainly because she had someone else right next to her (Gabrielle) to whom living like that came naturally, which it never did for her.
One of the reasons I (mostly) prefered Spike's redemption arc in middle-series Buffy was because of this. He's mostly being good for her, and because he runs out of other options, and it kind of turns into a habit. Which I, personally, found more interesting than the light-at-Damascus never-gonna-want-to-do-the-bad-thing-ever-again. So that sounds really interesting now! Conflict, I guess, is nice - if all the leads believed the same thing, TV would be really dull...

Dying is just a really easy end to a redemption arc - everyone gets to feel sad, and noone has to deal with the real consequences of what happened.

I've been working on a story where the former-villain sacrifices his life to save everyone else, and his daughter recognizes it as him not being willing to face the music--which she is, for the not-so-legal things she does. It really is an easy way out--I don't mind it now and then, and I think for some stories it is necessary (Star Wars, for example, follows a mythic pattern, so Vader living and things being messy would clash with that), but it's way overused.

*g* True, I have no issues with Vader dying. But, like you say, that's a myth-arc, so it kind of needs to go that way.

his daughter recognizes it as him not being willing to face the music--which she is, for the not-so-legal things she does.
And that's the interesting part! The grown-up thing, to take responsibility for what you did, and either defend it, or make amends, and deal with what comes next. That sounds like a really good plotline - that conflict between the easy way out and facing the music :)

I hope it's a good plotline!

Why shouldn't he fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the guy he betrayed and risk their lives together?

Oh, that sounds so much better and more interesting than 'and then he died'.

It doesn't have to be suffering, but it's as good a proof as any

One thing I've found interesting is people saying they want proof. That never occurred to me as something the audience might be looking for, and now I'm wondering why not. I think perhaps I don't categorise characters as good or bad per se. I can recognise they are filling the narrative role of hero or villain or whatever, and of course I form views of their actions and character as I would of real people, with good points and bad points and maybe a provisional overall judgement, but I don't have a sort of mental ledger with the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other. For that matter, it isn't exactly unusual for me to start thinking that the designated villain has a point, or that the hero is not perhaps living up to the highest possible moral standard, without it spoiling the story for me. I think I just don't assume that the moral worth of the characters has to match their role in the story. Hence I don't need proof that someone has moved from one side to the other. Also, I generally assume people really could have been good all along (maybe not saintly virtuous, but just run of the mill good) if they'd either done a better job of resisting some temptation or they hadn't been mistaken as to the nature of the good.

Redemption Arcs

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