Moral Event Horizon/Literature: Difference between revisions

** On the other hand, Victor crosses it simply by ''allowing'' the poor nanny to hang for a murder he knows she's innocent of. Sure, nobody would believe him if he told what really happened, but he doesn't even ''try'' to suggest the poor woman was framed.

* In Tolkien's ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', Melkor's destruction of the Two Trees, murder of Finwë and theft of the Silmarils. After this, he can never again take a form that looks anything other than completely evil, and is named as Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World.

* Saruman in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' crosses the [[Moral Event Horizon]] at the very end, when does everything possible to destroy the Shire out of pure spite. Up until that point, he'd done plenty of awful things, but had continually been offered (and refused) opportunities for redemption. The destruction of the Shire shows that he's irrevocably fallen from a wizard who was once great and wise to a bitter man with nothing left but hatred and the desire to harm others as much as possible.

* While never a morally upstanding guy, Turin is one of the few sympathetic characters in Middle Earth to pass this, at the climax of [[The Children of Hurin]] when he murders a lame man in a fir of rage, leaving even himself so disgusted that he commits suicide.

* [[Battle Royale|Kinpatsu Sakamochi]] crosses it when he reveals to the class that he raped Shuya and Yoshitoki's caretaker. Just to add insult to injury, he {{spoiler|kills [[Disproportionate Retribution|Yoshitoki for having a rightful outburst from the revelation and Fumiyo for whispering]]}}.

** Vilu Daskar from ''Legend of Luke'' also qualifies. He had done many evil deeds in his time, but the worst chronicled was the incident where he [[You Said You Would Let Them Go|promised a family of hedgehogs he'd release them]], if they showed him the hiding place of their secret stash of grain - then "released" them, tied up in their own grain sacks, weighted down with stones! He also murdered {{spoiler|Martin's mother, Sayna}}, [[Evil Laugh|laughing his head off]] all the while!

* In the [[Harry Turtledove]] novel ''[[The Guns of the South]]'', the AWB crosses this when they gun down Robert E. Lee's family in the middle of a crowd. The fact that they would be so single-mindedly callous turns pretty much the entire Confederacy against them.

** Driving the point home is the fact that ''Nathan Bedford Forrest'', Lee's opponent in said election in an alliance with the AWB, requests permission to lead the Confederate Army against them. Which means they must REALLY have crossed the MEH: Forrest is generally regarded as a real life [[Complete Monster]].

*** The AWB was too violent and too racist for one of the real-life founders of the Ku Klux Klan. The mind quite frankly boggles to think of it.

* The famous Swedish ''[[The Millennium Trilogy|Millennium]]'' trilogy has a both gruesome and realistic crossing of the [[Moral Event Horizon]]. From his first appearance, the lawyer Nils Bjurman is smug and arrogant. He is the legal guardian of the protagonist Lisbeth Salander - she is borderline-insane and thus declared unfit to be independent. Bjurman gradually abuses his position more and more: first interrogating Lisbeth about her sex life, then blackmailing her into giving him a blow job. However, on their next meeting he crosses the [[Moral Event Horizon]] in a spectacularly disgusting way: he binds and handcuffs her to a bed, then anally rapes her all night. He really [[Humiliation Conga|gets what's coming to him though]].

* In the ''[[Eternal Champion]]'' novella, the human military commander played near it when he {{spoiler|killed the Eldren commander while under a truce}}. But, the main character Ekrose crossed this firmly when he {{spoiler|killed the entire human race to protect the Eldren}}.

* [[Alpha Bitch|Chris Hargensen]] attained this status in [[Stephen King]]'s first novel, ''[[Carrie]].'' It's made clear in dialogue and descriptions that she is a cruel, manipulative, sadistic creature (one of her earlier exploits involved putting a firecracker in another girl's shoe, nearly causing the girl to lose some toes) who has never really faced consequences {{spoiler|prior to being excluded from the prom}} because of her father's status and willingness to use it. [[Mugging the Monster|She sets off the destruction of the whole town]] with the [[Prank Date]] she arranges, and [[Karmic Death|nobody is sorry when she finally gets it.]]

** Her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, takes part in the lethal prank too. And we shall not even ''get into'' Margaret White's treatment of her daughter...

** Dumbledore invokes this trope himself in relation to Voldemort, describing the {{spoiler|creation of a Horcrux}} as "moving beyond the realm of what we might describe as 'usual evil.'" Considering the implications of {{spoiler|tearing one's soul apart}}, this is probably justified.

** Also crossed when Bellatrix, Barty Jr., and two other Death Eaters subject Alice and Frank Longbottom (Neville's parents) to a [[Fate Worse Than Death]] - prolonged torture by Cruciatus curse until they became insane, unrecognizable vegetables. It's even worse that they did it after Voldemort was gone.