On the representation of evil in modern literature

Abstract

In a society such as our own (I am thinking particularly of Western European society) that sees little need for postulating the existence of God and no longer lives by specifically religious rules and rituals, it would seem that human intention and action could be quite adequately explicated in the language of ethics rather than theology : the opposite of good, consequently, is not evil, it is bad, that is to say, bad in the sense of being wrong morally, of willing and acting in ways that are in opposition to an accepted moral standard. The fact that it may be difficult to establish widely accepted moral standards does not invalidate the principle. When the word evil is used—and, of course, it is used—its semantic content is vague, or, if clear, then reductive, by which I mean that, more often than not, it acts merely as a kind of intensifier—so that, when one wants to express extreme outrage at an action of gross immorality, the word one reaches for is the word evil; but there would be no qualitative difference between a wrong action or intention and an evil action or intention. Given the nature of the relationship between art and its cultural context it would not be unreasonable to expect the literature of our own era to reflect this situation and, indeed, it would be surprising if it did not. We should expect the representation of evil in modem literature to take on an extremely etiolated and reductive form. But does it?