I found that Cinderella film online when it was last mentioned! and watched it with much enjoyment. :)
Yes, definitely, about being active in some way - which is The P of P, since he really has to be active.
Re: Dickens and choosing suffering, there's Sydney Carton, of course, whose redemptive goodness leads to passive suffering - but chosen, as a very conscious act. I don't think that fails at all.
Is the difficulty partly that we (in fiction - and maybe in life) see a person's 'evil' as defined by single acts, whereas their 'good' has to be proved, usually, by a lifetime's cumulative goodness? The fictional bad characters are accepted, too, as capable of doing one bad dramatic thing after another, but if a good character does one good dramatic thing after another, they are seen, outside of fantasy - and maybe in, as well - as laughably OTT heroes. (and of course if they do good undramatic things it makes pretty dull reading.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2015-07-25 04:44 am (UTC)Yes, definitely, about being active in some way - which is The P of P, since he really has to be active.
Re: Dickens and choosing suffering, there's Sydney Carton, of course, whose redemptive goodness leads to passive suffering - but chosen, as a very conscious act. I don't think that fails at all.
Is the difficulty partly that we (in fiction - and maybe in life) see a person's 'evil' as defined by single acts, whereas their 'good' has to be proved, usually, by a lifetime's cumulative goodness?
The fictional bad characters are accepted, too, as capable of doing one bad dramatic thing after another, but if a good character does one good dramatic thing after another, they are seen, outside of fantasy - and maybe in, as well - as laughably OTT heroes. (and of course if they do good undramatic things it makes pretty dull reading.)