Fiction as a Lab for Ethics

Fiction as a Laboratory for Ethics
SECOND LECTURE
sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com
education | storytelling | culture

WHAT EXCITES YOUR READER?
2
moenandar@gmail.com http://moenandar.blogspot.com

o Show don’t tell!
o Consider the
grotesque: zoom
in on the
(disgusting) detail
o Describe emotions
and experiences
instead of naming
them.
HOW TO KEEP YOUR READER ENGAGED?
3

oIs not excited by
information
oIs not excited by
the opinion of the
author
oIs excited by
reading as an
experience
THE READER OF FICTION…
4

WHAT EXCITES YOUR READER?
5

FIRST SENTENCES THAT STIR CURIOSITY
6
“Autumn was drawing to a close when Jaspar
brought the Disease to Kadis.”
- Torgny Lindgren, The Light -
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit -

FIRST SENTENCES THAT CREATE TENSION
7
“The snow in the mountains was melting and
Bunny had been dead for several weeks before
we came to understand the gravity of our
situation.”
- Donna Tartt, The Secret History -

FIRST SENTENCES THAT ENGAGE THE
READER
8
“Granted: I'm an inmate in a mental institution.”
- Günter Grass, The Tin Drum -
“Call me Ismael.”
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick -

FIRST SENTENCES THAT SHOCK
9
“When Daan Hollander, history teacher at
DataCare College in Amsterdam fucked fifth
grader Hajar for the first time, she kept her
headscarf on – as requested by him”
- Robert Anker, Hajar and Daan -

EXERCISE 1
0
Write a first sentence for your story

THE VALUE FO ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN
FICTION
1
Fiction is always a form of ethics

o Fiction is imaginary
o What’s the
relevance if it is only
lies?
o “Fiction is the lie
through which we
tell the truth.”
(Albert Camus)
WHAT IS FICTION?
2

FICTION AS A LABORATORY FOR ETHICS
3
Roy Andersson, World of Glory (1989)

EXERCISE 2
4
Write down what you find the most morally
reprehensible thing. Write a concrete situation.
So DON’T write:
I find animal abuse morally reprehensible.
BUT:
I find it morally reprehensible when a woman beats
a cat against a wall until it dies.

POINT OF VIEW: FOCALISATION
5
Arafat visits Sderot

oFocalisation: look,
feel, smell etc.
(experience)
oFocalisator: the
character from
whose point of
view we focalise
(experience) the
story
POINT OF VIEW: FOCALISATION
6

NO FOCALISATOR: EXTERNAL
FOCALISATION
7
The lovers sat at the deserted rivershore, the full moon above them. He held her
close to him. Their lips met.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘something is bothering me.’
‘Say it, darling,’ he said.
‘Have you read Das Kapital by Karl Marx?’
‘No, but I always wanted to.’
He started to unbutton her blouse.
‘Have some patience,’ she said. ‘Let’s read Das Kapital. I brought a copy.’
He withdrew his hand and said: ‘As you wish.’
They lit a lamp there along the river and started to read:
“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………”
After many months, when they had finished the four volumes of Das Kapital, he
continued his caresses. .
‘I love you,’ she said.
The moon shone on them.

8
Post Scriptum: The readers are kindly
requested to acquire the four volumes
of Das Kapital and to put its tekst
where the dots are. When they have
done so, this little story will become
the longest social realist novel in
contemporary literature.
(O.V. Vijayan, “A Progressive Classic”)

FOCALISATION THROUGH A CHARACTER:
INTERNAL FOCALISATION
9
oFixed focalisation: the whole story
is told from the point of view of
one character (please note: this
doesn’t necessarily have to be an
I-narrator)
oVariable focalisation: several
focalisators throughout the story.

INTERNAL FOCALISATION, FIXED
FOCALISATOR
0
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on
the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had
peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no
pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book,"
thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?'
So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could,
for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether
the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the
trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a
White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. .
(Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland)

INTERNAL FOCALISATION, VARIABLE
FOCALISATOR
2
He had to repress the urge to keep checking his phone. The
taste of the foul machine coffee that he’d drunk after lunch was
so all-pervasive that it was almost impossible for him to think
clearly.
“There is very little I can do about it now,” he said, and looked
past her shoulder , through the window. A large group of
swallows had come down among the blackberry bushes.
Not much wiser she drove back to the village that afternoon.
Why had Alan asked her to come? In the end, he’d told her very
little she didn’t know yet. Nothing that he hadn’t already talked
extensively about before.

SO: THREE TYPES OF FOCALISATION
2
o External focalisation
o Internal focalisation
• Fixed focalisator
• Variable focalisator
Please note! An I-narrator always means internal
focalisation, fixed focalisator, but this is not true
the other way around!

o Dilemma: main character
has to choose
o Best dilemmas are moral
dilemmas
o It is in the dilemma that
fiction truly becomes a
laboratory for ethics
o What could the moral
dilemma be in your own
story?
ETHICS IN A STORY: DILEMMA
3

EXERCISE 3
2
Write a fictional account of the immoral act you
described in assignment 2.
Describe this act with the perpetrator of the act as the
focalisator.
Also, remember: show, don’t tell.

Fiction as a Lab for Ethics

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