39,327
edits
Moral Event Horizon/Literature: Difference between revisions
m
update links
DocColress (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
m (update links) |
||
Line 3:
* 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.
** In the Akallabêth, after the Silmarillion but before the events of the [[Lord of the Rings]], Sauron crosses it when he engineers the destruction of Númenor by corrupting its king; like Morgoth, after this action he can never again take an appearance that is not evil.
* 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]]}}.
Line 16:
* In [[Chung Kuo]], rebel leader deVore crosses the moral event horizon in an infamous scene and never looks back
* 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...
Line 31:
* Jefferson Pinkard remains a sympathetic character for amazingly long in [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[Timeline-191]]'' series, despite being a member of the Nazi-equivalent Freedom Party, as we've known him since long before he joined and understand exactly why he's bitter enough to do it. At most, the reader is probably hoping for a while after he joins that he'll realize the path he's on before it's too late. However, when he comes up with a way to mass murder black people using truck fumes, the line is finally crossed definitively.
** In my opinion, he'd crossed the line before that, given the way he treats his wife earlier in the series. You could say his actions are somewhat justified, as he walked in on her cheating on him, but he hadn't stayed true to her either, which blows his reaction waaay out of proportion. I personally wasn't at all shocked at his masterminding the Freedom Party death camp policies by that point.
*** He didn't treat his wife too badly the first time he caught her. He only went off the deep end the second time, at a time in his life when everything was already going to hell.
* [[Legacy of the Force|Darth Caedus]], the [[Face Heel Turn|villainous]] [[Star Wars Expanded Universe|Jacen Solo]], was apparently intended, to be morally grey at first, sliding down into worse and worse acts of [[Necessary Evil]] until the Evil overwhelmed the Necessary. It didn't really turn out like that, considering what he did, including {{spoiler|fridging his own aunt, bombarding [[Throwaway Country|throwaway planet]] Fondor after they had already surrendered, and lighting decidedly NON-throwaway planet Kashyyyk on fire from orbit.}} Fans lost all sympathy for him long before this was intended to happen.
** Interestingly, what his family considered to be his [[Moral Event Horizon]] was comparatively minor, {{spoiler|using a Nightsister Blood Trail to track Jaina to the Jedi's secret base.}}
Line 51:
** ''By Heresies Distressed:'' Orders the assassination of {{spoiler|Prince Hektor and his sixteen year old heir}} with the expectation that Charisian Emperor Cayleb take the blame.
** ''A Mighty Fortress:'' Upon learning of a Reformist movement within the Church of God Awaiting, orders the arrests everyone directly involved he can get to, their families, every member of their personal staffs, and ''their'' families.
*** Arrested, tortured and ''executed'' by torture or by burning at the stake. Almost three thousand people died in various horrible ways... some of them as young as 14 (Worse, Safehold years are shorter than Earth-standard; chronologically, some of those kids were only 12). Oh, and he shows "mercy" by not executing the babies and toddlers--he just has them sent to extremely strict monasteries.
**** So heinous is this particular Moral Event Horizon that the long-awaited declaration of Holy War against Charis is rendered an ''afterthought'' by comparison.
* [[Complete Monster|High Lord Kalarus]] of the ''[[Codex Alera]]'' charges straight across this and never looks back. He spends most of his first appearance [[Kick the Dog|finding inventive ways to be a sexist pig and belittle slaves]], and his second involves attempting to kill a couple of 17-year-olds because his [[Smug Snake]] son tried to kill them and failed, and he doesn't want to look bad because of it. But we only really get an idea of how disgusting the man is in the book after that, when we learn {{spoiler|what he did and is doing to [[The Woobie|Rook]]}}. If the fact that he was {{spoiler|[[I Have Your Wife|holding her 5-year-old daughter hostage]]}} isn't enough to make you hate him, the fact that he later {{spoiler|keeps Lady Placida under control by setting gargoyles to kill the aforementioned 5-year-old if she tries anything}} should definitely do it. He also had his Legions ''target orphanages'' when he attacked another city, just to draw the defenders out.
Line 57:
* In ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', Nicodemus Archleone comes off as [[Affably Evil]] and even portrays himself a [[Noble Demon]]...except {{spoiler|he gleefully tortured Shiro to death for the sole purpose of gaining more power.}} At this point, while he's still ''very'' affable and polite and erudite, there's no doubt that he is ''not'' sympathetic at all.
** A later book in the series reveals that he actually crossed the MEH ''centuries'' ago. By unleashing something terrible on the world. Even if you haven't read the books, you've probably heard of it. It's called the ''Black Plague''.
*** His wife Tessa has also crossed the line both before the first appearance and after she
** This trope is notably averted by "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone. At first, he seems to be an irredeemable heartless mobster, who is willing to murder his enemies in cold blood. But every now and then, Marcone shows that there are lines that he is not willing to cross (e.g. hurting a child) and Harry realizes that Marcone can't simply be dismissed as a complete villain.
** In the short story ''Aftermath'', Murphy deals with what appears to be a mob of nasty fish-people called the Fomor. The lead Fomor callously tells it's [[Mook|Mooks]] to kill {{spoiler|Billy and Georgia's unborn child.}}
Line 86:
** Gregor Clegane's MEH came before the start of the series, when he {{spoiler|murdered a baby by dashing its head on a wall, then raped the mother with the boy's brains still on his hands.}}
** One of the most chilling MEH's of the novels comes when we find out what happened to [[Psychopathic Manchild|Ramsay Bolton's]] wife: He locked her in a tower with nothing to eat. [[Nightmare Fuel|They found her with no fingers and blood around her mouth.]]
** Once upon a time, Walder Frey and his brood were obnoxious hillbillies that the rest of Westeros had to tolerate because they held a major crossing. Then they decided to {{spoiler|massacre Robb and Catelyn Stark and the entire Northern army at the Red Wedding.}} Now readers cheer when random Frey children and grandchildren end up killed and used as the filling for delicious pies.
** In-universe, the two crimes that the people of Westeros see as crossing the moral even horizon are kinslaying and breaking [[Sacred Hospitality|guest-right]].
** Also played with early in Game of Thrones when Jaime Lannister {{spoiler|pushes the young Brandon Stark out of a window for witnessing him and his twin sister, the queen, having sex}}. This seems at the time to be a definite moral event horizon, but Jaime later becomes a gradually more sympathetic character after he undergoes extreme suffering over the course of the story, which prompts definite change in his moral character for the better. Whether he is likable after this and/or deserves forgiveness for his previous atrocities is a matter of opinion.
Line 93:
* The Libertines in ''120 Days Of Sodom'' are perhaps the most sadistic characters in classical literature. They kidnap several people, including their own daughters, and subject them to 120 days of violent, nightmarish psychological, physical, and sexual torture just [[For the Evulz]]. They go as far as to {{spoiler|disembowel pregnant women and maim their own daughters violently}}, and [[Moral Dissonance|the author treats the characters as heroes with minor quirks!]]
** The author in question is none other than the [[Marquis de Sade]], whose very name gave us the very word "sadism." And there's quite a bit more where that came from -- in the Sade novel ''Philosophy in the Bedroom'', Eugenie crosses the Horizon with the horrors that she, Dolmance and the other libertines visit upon her own mother, Madame De Mistival, who came to try to rescue her from her corruption, up to and including {{spoiler|having her raped by a man with syphillis and then ''sewing her genitals shut'' so that the polluted seed will be kept inside, which will most likely lead to her death}}.
* Invoked in-universe in the [[Coldfire Trilogy]]. In his backstory, [[Villain Protagonist]] [[Evil Sorcerer|Gerald Tarrant]] wanted to make a [[Deal with the Devil]] for immortality, but the entity he was bargaining with demanded he commit the worst act he could imagine in order to "sacrifice his humanity"- which he did by cold-bloodedly murdering his wife and children ''whom he genuinely loved''. {{spoiler|In the end, he drags himself back across by sacrificing his previous identity both physically and spiritually, effectively turning himself into a new person}}.
* Alongside being killed and failing to save their planet, crossing this is one of the [[Animorphs]] greatest fears.
{{quote|Jake: "He's right. We have to win."
Line 108:
** A number of readers are convinced that the Vigilantes themselves crossed this in ''Vendetta''. John Chai, son of the Chinese ambassador to the USA, had drunkenly hit-and-run Barbara Rutledge and her unborn child, killing them both. He then pulled a [[Karma Houdini]] with [[Diplomatic Impunity]]. The Vigilantes decide that the best punishment for the guy is to ''skin him alive''! Certainly, he was a creep, and was being used by the author to personify [[Yellow Peril]], but his deeds simply did not warrant that level of [[Disproportionate Retribution]]! Not only that, but the Vigilantes just shrug off what they've done afterwards. The fact that they are basically [[Villain Protagonist|Villain Protagonists]] who become [[Karma Houdini|Karma Houdinis]] themselves, and the author expects readers to see them as heroes fighting injustice wherever they see them just makes it worse!
* In ''[[The Tomorrow Series]] ,'' {{spoiler|Major Harvey}} looks like nothing but a [[Jerkass]] at first...but rapidly speeds past the [[Moral Event Horizon]] when it's revealed that so far from being a member of [[La Résistance]], he's [[Les Collaborateurs|an enemy collaborator,]] before advancing to full [[The Quisling|Quislinghood]]. {{spoiler|He takes the lead in interrogating Ellie and her friends, doesn't protest at all when they're condemned to death, and it's no fault of his that they escaped.}} Nobody who reads the books feels sorry for [[Taking You with Me|his eventual fate.]]
* Drake from ''[[Gone (novel)]]'' probably crossed it offscreen before we saw him, but when he happily goes off to kill an autistic four-year-old, and we get into his head and see how delighted he is with the prospect, there is no going back. {{spoiler|Fortunately, he is unsuccessful.}}
** Caine probably crossed it when he was too apathetic to stop a bunch of coyotes from feeding on young children when all it would've taken to stop them was asking them nicely. An alternate one would be his treatment of Diana in ''Plague'', which, although not anywhere near as bad as what he'd done before, was [[Kick the Morality Pet|destroying the one thing that kept him human.]]
** Diana herself sees {{spoiler|cannibalizing Panda}} as her own MEH, but, seeing as it partially prompted her {{spoiler|[[Heel Face Turn]],}} possibly not.
* In Richard Wright's ''Native Son'', [[Villain Protagonist]] Bigger Thomas is from the beginning kind of a sleazeball, what with committing indecent exposure and [[Dude, She's Like, in a Coma|feeling up an unconscious girl]] {{spoiler|and accidentally smothering that girl to death while trying to keep her from waking up and crying out}}, but he truly vaults over the line when {{spoiler|he rapes and murders his [[Only Sane Man|Only Sane Woman]] girlfriend once she [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|becomes a liability]]}}. Wright's point is that the ''true'' [[Complete Monster]] here is [[The Government|the corrupt system]] that allows people faced with crippling poverty to become this bad.
* Invoked at several points in ''[[Literatuve/The Monk|The Monk]]'', but when Ambrosio makes his Deal with the Devil, it's obvious that according to the rules of the story, he's gone too far.
* In ''Legend'', [[Complete Monster|Commander Jamerson]] was already portrayed as someone suspicious, but it's only near the end of the first half of the story is where her true colors are revealed. Case in point, {{spoiler|She orders her men to murder Day's mother. ''While Day is watching.'' '''''[[I Lied|AFTER saying that no innocent people would be killed.]]''''' Is it any wonder that [[The Hero|June]] decides to save Day after this?}}
| |||