My creative writing piece is about Kaito, a Japanese boy struggling to stand in a neglectful society devoid of empathy or understanding. Drawing from 'Representations of Evil in Literature' my piece illustrates concepts of the conflicts of morality, as well as the paradoxical evil. My creative piece incorporates both a moral quandary which is tested by an 'evil' entity underpinning how evil acts as a form of alleviating life's moral dilemmas.
From the onset of the task, I was disheartened by the representations of evil theology in literature. At times I seemed to grasp the concept of morality, but I found the dense content ambiguous, and I was often perplexed. However, upon researching 'Representations of Evil in Literature', I harnessed my knowledge on the concepts of paradoxical evil and how it's often misinterpreted, formulating the groundwork for my creative composition. Within this document, quotes from Professor Paul Oppenheimer assert that evil is not merely the immoral dialled to 100, but rather a concept that reaches beyond the mundane and ordinarily comprehensible. Oppenheimer promotes the artistic depiction, rather than the intellectual speculation, to reflect evil within our morality and society. Drawing from Oppenheimer's theory, I employed the genre of magic realism intended to provoke intellectual contemplation while accurately illustrating the profoundness and wickedness of evil. The vividly crafted prose on the temptation of disparity and impurity by Francis Hardinge, as well as the grim, horrific twist on fantasy exploring the agony of loss by John Connolly, these novels, inspired the themes and aesthetic of my short story.
Nevertheless, the challenge of convincingly portraying evil, as well as it's corruption of morality underpinned by society, poised another challenge for my creative piece. Using sources from the 'Biblical Religion and the Novel' by Thomas Woodman, it is argued that often literary pieces on evil tend to lean towards being more a prefabricated and trite response rather than genuine exploratory. Thus, I explored the concept of evil in its pure form, being distant from the spectrum of dualities such as light and dark. Within my piece, the Mononoke spirit of the puppet tempts Kaito to embrace his internal darkness, serving as an escape from the conflicts of morality in succumbing to evil. Additionally, my visual stimuli position the puppet as a superficial presence overshadowing the pureness of Kaito, accentuating the ever-present force and temptation of evil. Similarly, when the townsfolk of Minato-Gake, the fictional town in my piece, alienate and neglect Kaito, it underpins societal evil. Furthermore, I symbolise the inescapable paradox of evil throughout the innocent hope of Kaito and the hopelessness of his father. Takashi succumbs to the comforts of modern society such as alcohol in light Kaito's mother's death, fostering a dissonance between father and son in which Kaito's tries to latch onto hope. In the end, society's soullessness in rejecting Kaito ends in his submission to the darkness swelling inside of him. In this sense, evil overshadows the balance of right and wrong, as it is inextricably interwoven into the bleakness and harshness of the modern reality.
When researching the values and notions of culture expressed in literature, I stumbled upon the works of German Folklore by the Brothers Grimm. Published in the 1800s these mythologies enforced the moral teachings of discipline through fear, prompting values of courtesy and humility in a time of indecency and corruption. Naturally, by studying how the values and notions of culture influence literature at the time, I focused on how the values and ideas of modern society underpin our perceptions of morality and evil. Thus, my creative piece centres on the internal burdens of Kaito, who is neglected by a society devoid of empathy or understanding influenced by the values and notions of today's disconnected world. Good-hearted morality is often obscured and disregarded by gossip and secrecy, symbolised in my story by the local rumours scorning Kaito and his father's tragic fall. This much is true in the craziness and chaos we see today, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic, in which societal norms driven by isolation, secrecy and fear bring out our true selves. The philosophy of Immanuel Kant fosters a similar concept, in which individual innateness or propensity to evil is influenced by an ability to manipulate or facilitate moral order. Affected by depravity or corruption of morality, choices can either bolster or tear down an individual's moral code in delivering personal wants and desires. These depravities of moral virtues assimilate and often dehumanise individuals as can be seen today in the case of COVID-19, where infected people are often rendered as statistics rather than lives as a product of societal fear in bringing the pandemic under control.
In conclusion, my creative piece draws on the notions of how cultural neglect and lack of moral virtue inflicts an individual's propensity to evil within themselves.
