Looking back over past blogs, I realised that in my 'Prayer for a person confused about goodness' I wrote 'when the baddies defeat the goodies', instead of 'when the goodies defeat the baddies'.
This is a bit of a giveaway! I often empathise with the villains of film and TV... They're people too! And often their reasons for 'turning' are quite understandable. I was watching the last film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy the other day and thinking that Tolkien really had quite a simple understanding of 'good' and 'bad', although the character of Denethor is quite complex and resonates for me, representing the relationship between despair and being 'darkened' somewhat.
Mind you, I have to admit that people banging on about hope, particularly with respect to literature (eg. 'If there is no hope in a book, I don't want to read it.') annoy me immensely. I always think that to be really hopeful, a book has to come up against real despair and prevail, not just skim the surface. But maybe I'm saying that because in essence I'm a Denethor and just like the despair. It also seems to me that people who talk about hope like this just don't want to confront the less than ideal in people and relationships. Two of my favourite authors are Raymond Carver and Richard Ford (particularly the short stories in 'Rock Springs') because they do just this, unflinchingly, with honesty and, it has to be said, some warmth towards their characters.
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