Can a character be good and evil at the same time?

[MJN SEIFER]

Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but I have been wondering this for a while now.

Let's say there's a character in a film/programme/game who starts of as a good person (for this example I'll say it's a guy), but then something makes him evil - I don't mean some tragic event affects him and he becomes evil later in life, I mean like something "supernatural" takes over him and he becomes evil that way (if that makes any sense).

Since this character was a good person before the "supernatural something" made him evil - is he now both good and evil at the same time?

[Bunny]

Two-Face?

Oh nevermind, I should read the thread. Good and evil are fairly arbitrary terms but I suppose there is a way for a good and evil personality to exist in one body.

[ANGRYWOLF]

is a prime example of that..as we have discussed on another thread...

Personal loss..the death of a loved one can cause a personality change...

Teta's murder caused Delita to change..and not for the better imo.

Having been through something along those lines myself..and knowing others who have been through it..I can testify to that happening..:mad2:

hmmm..but I guess that isn't what you mean.

There are some people who believe in possession...I don't though.

Again using Tactics as an example I don't believe in some astral type being taking you over and making you evil.

You can change to be either good or evil..or be good sometimes and do bad things at other times..but there's nothing supernatural about it.
It's due to your personality, upbringing, personal values and circumstances.

[VexNet]

there are actually many many different reasons for a good person to turn into a bad guy.

They are listed on TV Tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceIndex).

[Hot Shot]

Characters can be conflicted in the sense that they are torn between good and evil. I find it makes them more interesting as it adds another dimension to them.

[ReloadPsi]

There are plenty of religions that have slaughtered countless people in the name of what they thought was a good cause. Make of that what you will :p

[Miriel]

If you didn't add in the supernatural stipulation, I'd say Dexter is a good example of someone who is good and evil at the same time.

[Mercen-X]

There's no such thing as good and evil. There are simply good intentions with evil consequences and poor intentions which may not have any recognizable consequences. Most people just want to be happy. Some people don't know how. Some believe they can fill their void through power. Power is obtained/expressed in several differing ways: Competition & Control (over money, over people probably through money or fear, maybe even over animals or technology) being just two.

If we are looking at good and evil as qualifiers for some deity to judge us by, then we'll all be deemed evil for some reason or another.

[Ezme]

I think Gul Dukat from Star Trek Deep Space Nine is one of the most underrated characters in fiction.He truly believed he was one of the good guys and didn't understand why the bajoran people hated him so, might have had something to do with the genocide. He believed he was protected them and could be gentle, caring and a family man. He had capacity for good (and there's a few epps where he is the good guy) which just made his evil seem even worse. And he ultimate is the big bad.

Woah... I think my inner star trek geek got loose! Sorry folks!

[Del Murder]

This has happened many times before in media. I see it as kind of a copout. I think it's done because it's easier and it allows for the villain to quickly 'snap out of it' at the last minute and provide some last bit of redemption. When the villain is that way based on the choices he made (Darth Vader) it can be powerful, but when he is being controlled by some supernatural force (Golbez) it can be lame.

One of the worst examples of this is Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2. Instead of making Doc Ock a mad scientist who takes vengeance on the world after losing his wife and being ridiculed for his life's work, they instead made it so some machine is controlling his mind and making him evil. It almost ruined that movie for me.

For some reason media doesn't want to make real villains. Like they are unwilling or too lazy to show how human beings can become evil. I wish there were more villains like the Joker (maniac with no real purpose and only wants to create chaos) or Magneto (truly believe his cause is just and his methods are a means to an end). Those types of villains make for much more interesting stories.

To answer your question, I think those types of villains would be considered both good and bad. They are good deep down, but they are carrying out bad deeds. Usually they are not completely innocent of what they do, instead they are acting out deep hidden desires without inhibitions.

[missaira]

severus snape.

[Mercen-X]

That traitor chick on FlashForward.

Anyway. Perspective is key. Some things that even the heroes do can be considered evil (Hellboy killing the Forest God on Golden Army) as a means to achieve the be-all end-all ideal of peace, justice, or order that they seek. AVALANCHE planted bombs on Mako reactors that were supplying power throughout the slums. They believed they were saving the planet but they didn't stop to consider the consequences they were bringing on the citizens of Midgar. They were called terrorists.
The Fifth Column on V are called terrorists. They believed once but now know for certain that the Visitors are evil but their acts to the rest of the world that deem the Visitors as saviors are labeled terrorism due to pure ignorance.
As Jack Sparrow put it, "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do." This speaking to physicality and by no means relaying any moral dilemma. Another way of looking at is the Vulcan's famous line, "when you eliminate the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth." In this way, the same could be said for one's solution to a problem. Most Vulcan's (unlike Spock, who is half-human) will often seek out the most logical solutions to a problem even if it involves killing innocent people most likely for the sake of saving others just like Ozymandias did on Watchmen with the whole Manhattan strike that would kill millions to save billions. Ozzy, Eddie, and Rorschach were all sociopaths on some level. Were any of them truly evil or a villain?

[Shlup]

The kinds of characters that blur the lines between good and evil are the best kinds of characters. Raistlin Majere, from Dragonlance, is one of my favorite characters for that reason.

http://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/batman-alignment.jpg

[Iceglow]

I can name hundreds of characters who do evil in the name of good. For a powerful literary example I'll point to a section of Robert Jordan's wheel of time, now this takes place in the latest book, finished after his death by another author but I've read it and it's still an amazing book.

A man is captured by one of the most powerful power users of the age, she is one of the most dangerous, not just because of her power but because she likes to compel people innocent people to do her bidding. She compells a messenger to go to the Dragon Reborn, Rand Al' Thor and invites him to her palace. Rand cottons on to the man's condition in part because inside his head he hears the thoughts and voice of "the Dragon" Lews Therin Telamon. Rand forces Nynaeve a close friend and perhaps the most powerful woman alive in terms of raw strength and healing capabilities to remove the compulsion so he might learn the location of the forsaken one, doing so killed the man. He did however get the information he sought and then to make sure he utilized a lord of the nation he was in to send a message replying to the forsaken to her palace alone and unarmed. The lord returns heavily compelled to invite Rand to go with him to her palace. At that point Rand draws as much of the power as he can and forms a weave of power so destructive it's forbidden never used by friend or foe. In fact it had been forgotten (mainly due to the forsaken being bound for thousands of years behind cuendillar seals) for thousands of years until the thoughts of "Lews Therin" made Rand perform the weave in a battle against the forsaken and worse. Balefire will not only destroy and kill but will physically erase the things it destroyed, it is as if they never were, depending on the size of the balefire beam and it's power the more of the history of the victim you erase, things they do are undone ect ect. He doesn't go in to the palace which he knows is a trap regardless of the hundreds perhaps thousands of people there, he burns it from the pattern with balefire. How does he justify killing so many people? "Her abilities lie in playing games, when you know you're out smarted you make them believe you're going to sit down and play their game then when they start to think you will, when they don't expect it you reach out and punch them as hard as you can in the face."

The Dragon Reborn or Rand Al' Thor is such a good example of this because he is destined from before he was born to fight the dark one, the worlds equivalent of the devil a source of pure evil. He is all that symbolizes good and justice in the world he must break down the nations and unite them to form an army capable of taking the fight to the enemy. He is also destined to go mad, he must use Sadin the male half of the one power to defeat foes what he cannot best with sword alone and in doing so he will expose himself to a taint placed upon Sadin by the Dark One when he first fought the original Dragon, Lews Therin in ages past. Because for longer than living memory all male channellers have gone mad and died horribly or been caught and executed for the crime of being a man who can channel there is no one alive who can teach him except for his greatest enemies, the forsaken. Rand does end up imprisoning the weakest of the Forsaken for a while to learn from. He also learns from the memory of Lews Therin in his head. The thing that makes Rand so chilling at times is not the madness he has from having wielded tainted power for some time (even though he cleanses it eventually) it's not even the imprisoning his enemies so that he might learn it's the sane, rational decisions he makes such as the way he defeated the forsaken in the above passage. He literally was prepared to calmly, cooly destroy as many innocents as he had to without thought for them purely to kill one woman.

In movies/tv I would point out the recent series Chris Ryan's strikeback. In that a british soldier (Collinson) attached to an SAS squad for a rescue mission makes a mistake, he hears boots on a stairway and opens fire he kills 2 of the SAS squad as they come up the stairs and mortally cripples a 3rd because bullet fragments become embedded in the soldier's brain. He has an opportunity to come clean and he out of fear for himself covers it up. Instead the commander of the squad (Porter) takes the blame, he is pensioned out of the regiment and his wife and daughter leave him because everyone assumes including him that he is somehow responsible for the deaths of his 3 best mates. Meanwhile the actual killer escapes recrimination, he becomes a decorated soldier, a war hero who later ends up heading up a British intelligence division tasked with running missions such as the one he was on originally with (Porter) the SAS. He ends up using Porter as an agent to rescue a hostage reporter in Iraq because Porter believes he has seen the only lead they have before, as a child rigged to be a bomb out in Iraq when the original mission to Iraq to free a hostage took place. Porter should have executed the boy but he instead knocks the boy out. Out in Iraq Porter gets himself captured by the terrorists and before he and the reporter get executed he manages to convince the boy now a man to help him escape. They make it to the rendezvous with the chopper when Porter and the reporter get aboard the chopper the command comes down from Major Collinson that the boy is not to be allowed on the chopper even though it's a complete death sentence since the terrorists are literally 30m away shooting at them.

Collinson does good in the fact that he is rescuing people and defending his country (if not in person in the field he still gives the orders what allow this to happen) and he genuinely does support Porter in the field even though if Porter does find out the truth his career is over. However he commits acts of evil such as forbidding the extraction of the terrorist who helps Porter escape (Asif) because if Asif were to speak to others he could reveal the truth of who killed the 2 british SAS troops and crippling a third. He commits acts of evil to protect himself and his position but his position allows acts of good to occur.

[Breine]

Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the book, not the Disney movie!) is a good example. He's an archdeacon and very compassionate. He e.g. takes Quasimodo in and raises him like a son, and does everything that he's supposed to as a man of his status. He's lived as a celibate for his entire life, and thus has had to surpress a lot of stuff - things start to go wrong when he meets Esmeralda and becomes completely obsessed with her sensuality and beauty. He's no longer able to control himself, and everything he's surpressed for so long starts to burst out, and he becomes mad with lust.

Gollum is another example - he's driven mad by the ring.

Xena also comes to mind - although she's now trying to live as a good guy, her evil side is just under the surface and sometimes comes out too.


But really, there are many examples.

[oddler]

Since this character was a good person before the "supernatural something" made him evil - is he now both good and evil at the same time?

My opinion: the affected character retains their previous personality while "possessed"; therefore, they're still "good", they're simply a puppet to the actual "evil".

I agree with others that have said that walking the line between good and evil is really what makes a good character or story.

[Greatermaximus]

Is fiction real? We know the answer to that. It depends on the story and 'you' define evil. Typically you can write a character who is kind to an old lady in a crowded room but will suddenly take out their weapon to assasinate someone else in particular.

[Shoeberto]

If you didn't add in the supernatural stipulation, I'd say Dexter is a good example of someone who is good and evil at the same time.
Yep, Dexter's the first thing that came to mind here. Though what he does isn't completely evil, I suppose - it's not ruthless and random - he is constantly walking the line between the two ends of the spectrum of good and evil.

[blackmage_nuke]

http://pix.motivatedphotos.com/2008/10/9/633591476656757413-Bakura.jpg

[Laddy]

Hello, Mr. James Sawyer Ford.

[BG-57]

My view is that everyone contains both good and evil, it is simply our actions that determines who we are overall.

Agreed about Delita, he's one of the most morally ambivalent characters in any FF. It's arguable that he wouldn't have been as ruthless had he not lost Teta so traumatically.

In a similar vein, Jowy in Suikoden II goes through many of the same events, despite being the hero's best friend. He assassinates the mayor of Muse and arranges for the death of most of royal family of Highland, eventually taking over the Kingdom and becoming King himself. All along he's clearly conflicted about the lives he's taken, but the his Sword rune drives him to fight the hero's Shield rune.

A movie with great ambivalent characters is In Bruges, where the two main characters are hitmen and their boss is a ruthless gang lord. Yet they agonize over lives that they have taken, and go out of their way to avoid drawing innocent bystanders into their conflicts. The scene where an innkeeper refuses to allow two of them to have a shootout in her hotel is a masterpiece of tension and comedy. Even the most villanous of the characters has a strict code of honor.

[Mirage]

They could do things that are considered good, but for evil reasons.