"Darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good."I have mentioned this quote from the book Marked a couple of times and how I wasn't quite sure that I agreed with what it said. Well, I finally sat down and organized my thoughts and this is what I have come up with.
In regards to books, I think this quote sums up excellently the change in modern culture's opinion on good and evil in books. Things that are evil and dark, like vampires, or dragons, werewolves, and so on, are not evil and dark. Things that are good and light, like elves, and fairies, and angels, (probably most importantly GOD), are not good and light. Modern fairytales leave you with a sense of confusion. You grew up reading stories where the dragon was evil and had to be slain, yet now they are a fad, everyone wants a dragon. Vampires were once heartless, soulless creatures who would suck your blood out because they needed it to survive, now you are presented with 'vegetarian' vampires, and vampires with morals. Then you get Christians mixed in, like the People of Faith in Marked, and you loose that boundary of morals even more. People with Christian morals are the oppressor, the bad guys (in Marked the People of Faith are clearly that, because that is the great misconception society has about Christians today).
Moving deeper into it, however, you are presented with even more complexity. You have stories (Fantasy) and humans (reality) and those are jumbled together and mixed up to where there is no fantasy and no reality. Modern society gives mythological creatures souls and morals, makes them good, and goes and makes humans (mostly Christians) the evil thing to be gotten rid of.
"The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.” - G.K. Chesterton
We grew up believe that dragons could be conquered. Now our children are growing up believing that humans should be conquered with dragons. People with authority should be ignored and defeated. You wonder why teens today are so depressed? It's because the morals they grew up on, that humans can defeat the giant, undefeatable monsters like dragons has been twisted. No longer can you look towards yourself to defeat the dragon, because maybe the dragon (no matter how 'good' it is) cannot be defeated. Humans are being characterized as the evil to be defeated. Seriously think on it, humans are evil, they have to be killed using vampires, or werewolves, or dragons, they don't allow for the complexity of human nature to come through. In Marked Zoey is no longer a human, she is a vampire. Every human that she knows (her grandmother being the one exception) is the bad guy (or at least so weak that she can easily rule over them), and don't get her started on the oppressive People of Faith. It clamors for teens to start to worship the goddess Nyx, because she is the almighty, beautiful, and good goddess, whereas the People of Faith's god, (AKA the Christian God) is the degrading, ugly, and evil god. Wonder why there are shootings in school? Look at what they read. It tells them that things that do exist (humans, God, Christianity) are evil, and the things that are evil (vampires, gods and goddesses) are good. Wouldn't you be utterly depressed if there was only evil in this world? They don't realize that there is good out there, because all they read about is that the good in our world is actually evil.
Taking the words of Neil Gaimen, who is paraphrasing the earlier quote from G.K. Chesterton:
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
And remember to 'read the right books' (C.S. Lewis Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader reference there.) Because...
"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." - C.S. Lewis
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