Evil Stories
October 3, 2022
Micah Mattix writing in The Spectator reminds us that all good stories depend on real evil, which is not simply moral corruption, but rather also includes (quoting the philosopher Agnes Callard) "hunger, fear, injury, pain, anxiety, injustice, loss, catastrophe, misunderstanding, failure, betrayal, cruelty, boredom, frustration, loneliness, despair, downfall, annihilation. This list of evils is also a list of the essential ingredients of narrative fiction."
The Hebrew word for "evil" is RA (רַע), which makes its first appearance in the Text in Genesis 2:9, where we read about "the tree of the knowledge of good and EVIL". As Collard writes, even the Hebrew's use of RA extends far beyond moral corruption. RA appears 667 times in the Hebrew Bible, and the translators render it as evil, but also as calamity, displeasure, distress, and many of the words Callard mentions.
Stories that resonate with us -- that is, stories which work -- depend on the presence of real evil -- of RA -- because our own stories are suffused with evil in that broad sense. All of creation groans in anguish, waiting for its renewal by the One who is all Good (TOV (טוֹב) in the Hebrew).
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