Writing “Good”: Rethinking the Virtuous Character in Fiction (January 2023)
INTRODUCTION:
Contemporary stories are dominated by characters who do terrible things but have complicated reasons for doing so. Virtuous characters? Not so much. Characters “too good” for the world present a host of challenges. They come across as “flat,” “boring,” and frankly too perfect. They annoy and repel modern readers who are unable to understand or relate to them. How then can a writer make “good” interesting? In this class, I will look at a handful of virtuous characters in classic and contemporary novels and interrogate how goodness can be used to drive a story and add fresh perspective in our age of disillusionment.
Text include Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.
Graduate class lecture and craft essay. Paper available upon request.