Somewhere along the line, the villain origin story got out of hand. What began as a way to explain evil has become a money grab to put out another movie. Case in point: does knowing Cruella de Vil’s childhood trauma really redeem the fact that she wants to kill ninety-nine puppies? Having said that, there is still plenty of room to look a villain in the eye, if not to explain their cruelty but to recognize their shared humanity. Who doesn’t want more of that?
The latest achievement of the villain’s point of view is George Saunders’ Vigil. Saunders’ new protagonist is an angel named Jill “Doll” Blaine who has been assigned to usher the dying into the afterlife. She’s good at her job. She’s brought comfort to hundreds of souls and brought them safely to the other side. But Jill finally meets her match in Texas oil tycoon K.J. Boone, a modern Scrooge if there ever was one. Boone is self-made and self-important. Building his empire at the cost of the environment’s breakdown, he spread anti-environmentalist propaganda to ensure his success. And he is utterly unrepentant. Characters, both living and dead, come to convince Boone that he must acknowledge the consequences of his actions, but to no avail. He is unrepentant and armed with enough excuses and justifications to last an eternity.
By all accounts, Boone is irredeemable. Except, of course, for one account: that of the author himself. Through supernatural powers, Saunders inconveniently invites the reader into Boone’s interior life. It turns out that Jill has access to Boone’s subconscious. More than that, she is able to experience what he feels.
His memories, his bitter indignation and resentments, his suppressed love. It’s painfully disarming. It doesn’t justify his crimes against humanity, but it does make it much more difficult to judge him as a sinister fiend. To be clear, if there ever was a son of a bitch on God’s green earth, it is probably K.J. Boone. There is just one problem. He kind of reminds me of myself sometimes.
When we think of our own enemies, great or small, the backstory we construct is paper thin. We expect that they are, and always have been, terrible people. It fits within our logical framework that the schoolyard bully grows up to be a slumlord or that the vindictive neighbor can simply be dismissed as crazy. While today’s fictional villains are often cast in a sympathetic light, our real-life ones are rarely offered a complete picture. We may be willing to be more understanding of the Joker, but not to our boss, spouse, or any of the other culprits of everyday life.
The brilliance of Vigil is its pull on the concept of morality. Boone’s lack of regret makes you want the sweet, compassionate Jill to grab him by the collar and set him straight. But Boone never gets a wake-up call. That is not the way of George Saunders. As his character develops, we start cross-examining our own propensity to judge him. Saunders talked about this a few weeks ago in a great interview with David Marchese:
That seems to me … the magic of fiction, because in fiction I can make a person that I really don’t like — like this guy in the book, he’s a stinker — but through the weird side door of trying to make the language about him more interesting, pretty soon “like” and “dislike” become almost useless phrases. You are him. You have been him. Specificity negates judgment. So as I work harder and harder to know that guy, my sense of wanting to judge him seems juvenile. Anybody can judge. Let’s go deeper. I really cherish that feeling. Of course it doesn’t last beyond the page, and I’m sure if I met his real-life corollary, I’d be sneering at him. But what a blessing to, for a few minutes a day, ascend up out of your habit.
Specificity negates judgment. Not ethics or morals or even sympathy, but specificity. We only judge someone when they are distinct from ourselves, but what if they like the same music we like? What does it say about you if your enemy shares the same Myers-Briggs type? There is a direct correlation between someone’s relatability and one’s ability to judge them. I realize it is not a unique or enlightened opinion to say that reading fiction teaches empathy, but it’s nice to be reminded that understanding people and knowing the details of their life can help disarm one’s judgmental heart.
As talented a writer as Saunders is, Vigil is not perfect. The book has been accurately described as a “21st-century secular Buddhist Christmas Carol.” It often almost depicts the nature of grace but never quite crosses the finish line. Some have criticized Boone’s lack of retribution as unjust, even nihilistic. How can Saunders not explain why K.J. Boone never gets his due? What does it say about life if such an awful man is never held accountable? And yet, there is something realistic about the fact that Boone is unrepentant. That’s true to life, isn’t it? Even if we are sorry, we are often sorry for the wrong things. None of us are saved by our repentance.
Judging is one of humanity’s favorite pastimes. We judge our parents, our children, our spouses, our coworkers, our friends, Olympic skaters, the driver in front of us. How could they be so ________ (fill in the blank: ignorant, prideful, careless, selfish, etc.)? Why can’t they see what is wrong with them? The answer, unfortunately, is that they’re a lot like us.
The villain’s backstory will probably never go out of style. We’re wired to seek reasons behind people’s actions and make sense of the cruelty that some people are able to carry out. But Saunders offers more than pop psychology that distances us from those we hate. He carries us beyond the threshold of spectacle to see the human within the monster. To know that, as Derek Webb once sang, “My enemies are men like me.”
Of course, the only thing that is more confounding than evil is grace. The story of when God became the villain is infinitely more strange and inexplicable than any villainous backstory we could fabricate. We may, albeit briefly, be able to see ourselves in the eyes of our enemies, but Jesus’ ability to love his enemies will always feel foreign to us. One could make a lot of movies on such a theme. Who doesn’t want more of that?
“Judging is one of humanity’s favorite pastimes.” My father was my greatest villain. If I shared the details as to why I can rightly call him out as such, many would say, “Now THAT is a real son-of-a-bitch.” But I will spare you. And I say he was my greatest villain because the deeply seeded resentment that was his legacy to me (he had help from others by the way) ran deep and unrelenting. I created new villains daily through that unrelenting resentment. To say I had a chip on my shoulder is an understatement, and I hoped daily that someone would try to knock it off. I would make them pay.
Miraculously, I avoided prison, at least the kind with physical walls and bars. In my mid twenties, I turned to the Lord. I got somewhat better, but mostly superficially so. I was introduced to the typical steps of discipleship most churches employ, which is only three steps of what should be seven: 1. Salvation 2. Education 3. Serve. Number 4, which I’ve heard called the trough, is mostly skipped. The place where you discover who you really are ontologically, how you have been being in the world.
I spent 40+ years in various churches employing the same three steps. At 60 years of age I was introduced to the fact that what I had been battling wasn’t just deep anger and resentment. Those things and others were symptomatic of a much deeper problem, Complex Post Traumatic Stress. Not looking for sympathy (empathy yes not sympathy). Sympathy or pity heal no one. Traced it all back to my father and others in early life. Made my resentment for my father and others worse. Then I learned something about my father that changed everything.
I think it was Henry Cloud who said, there’s always one more piece of information. That piece of information was the treatment my father received as a young boy from his father, who had been awarded bronze stars as a combat veteran during WWII. He most likely went into combat with trauma from his early life as well. The treatment I got from my father, was far less than what he got from his. How deeply tragic humanity can be.
Exodus 34: 6-7 says; “Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth; who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”
As you rightly stated, no trauma excuses making the wrong choice that hurts and scars others, but it does explain why it happens. Those who are abused become abusers themselves, and so it rolls down through the generations, under the supervision of God Almighty. I’ve heard that the word in Hebrew translated “visits” means something more like supervision, because God in His mercy does not want the full corruption of our bad choices to fully affect us or His creation.
Thank you for your article, and for providing an opportunity for me to exercise step 7 of discipleship, turning to try and help others. There are so many like me who have this in their lives, and don’t even know what they are dealing with. I hope there are those reading this who’ve had what I’ve said point them in the right direction for deep and abiding healing, toward wholeness. God Bless you all!
Thank you for sharing Kent. I’m in my early 20s, finally became faithful a couple years ago. Hearing your story, the things you and others in your position are so important for so many Christians. For new Christians, for lifelong. For young Christians, and for old. The willingness to be vulnerable and honest in telling it is something I do wish happened more. There’s hiding the negativity because it’s unnecessary in a Christian conversation, and then there’s being unwilling to be truthful about struggles which others can learn from, grow from, help with, pray for, bring upon more sympathy or empathy than was there before. Kent, your willingness to share this part of you is appreciated.
Sure, we’re told to love our enemies which can be tough (even without traumatic conditions), but I know from my brief life experience that sometimes the best we can have is an understanding of our enemies, some slight sympathy for them. Even that little is an opening of the door enough to dispel a significant volume of hatred and dislike we had for them, no matter how much they hurt us. For instance, I still cannot make full peace with some of the people that caused me the most hurt, but I definitely understand why they acted the way they did and I may have done similar in their position.
God bless you Kent.