In a 2011 interview, Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin was asked about the worlds of Westeros and Winterfell—two of the major geographic areas in Game of Thrones. The interviewer notes that, unlike many other fantasy stories, Martin’s world is rather dark. It is a world of beauty and brutality.
Though Martin admits to being a “dark writer,” he believes his work is more “realistic” than dark. He notes, “I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white. I have an instinctual distrust of conventional happy endings. The best fantasy does have a thread of darkness that runs through it.” Martin goes on to juxtapose the importance of friendship and the reality of love with the experience of loneliness and the death that all of us will suffer.
Martin’s characters reflect life’s ambiguity. They exist in the space between heroes and villain,s performing seemingly virtuous acts while plotting and scheming as they pursue their own ambitions. Despite their poor choices and flaws, Martin’s morally grey characters are oddly likable. There is a sense in which we identify with them. While we might not lie, steal, and kill to, for instance, protect our families, avenge an enemy, or secure a position of power, we can often appreciate the motives of the characters even as we cringe at the means.
What Are Morally Grey Characters?
Morally grey characters are compelling, in part, because they reflect the complexity of our own thoughts and feelings. We are all capable of callousness and compassion, cruelty and kindness. As we look in on morally grey characters, we are invited to consider our own understanding of truth, goodness, and beauty while negotiating the limits of human behavior. Morally grey characters add suspense to a story because they are unpredictable—they have conflicting motivations and unique strengths and weaknesses that condition their behavior in a given situation. We get to watch as they face impossible circumstances with limited resources and deal with the fallout of their decisions in “real time.”
As we move into metamodernity—the mood in which, according to Jonathan Rowson, we are “caught up in the co-arising of hope and despair, credulity and incredulity, progress and peril, agency and apathy, life and death”—we are less prone to resonate with pristine heroes without relatable flaws or weaknesses. While morally grey characters existed well before metamodernity, the metamodern turn almost certainly makes morally grey characters more compelling, if not normative. We are more likely to appreciate seeing characters wrestle with irreconcilable thoughts, emotions, and choices oscillating between conflicting perspectives and attitudes. Morally grey characters hold together despite the conflicts evident within them—they embody ongoing tension.
Morally grey characters tend to be motivated by something. They operate within a moral framework though that framework doesn’t necessarily constrain the character’s actions. Instead, morally grey characters are willing to engage in seemingly justifiable yet morally questionable activities. To some extent, the actions of morally grey characters can seem compelling because the means bring about a positive result.
Consider, for instance, the hit television show Yellowstone, which is full of morally grey characters. John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, is driven to protect his land from urbanization and to preserve his family’s legacy, both, in certain respects, noble pursuits. In the process of doing so, however, Dutton is not shy about using political leverage, blackmail, and violence. In his mind, the end justifies the means, no matter how unsavory those means may be.
We might also look at the Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) on House, M. D. House is a brilliant diagnostician who saves lives that other doctors can’t. To do so, however, the House pushes the limits of medical ethics. For instance, in one episode, there is an unknown disease killing babies in the maternity ward. Knowing that all the babies have the same disease, House instructs his team to give one child a different treatment than the other as sort of a mini-diagnostic trial. Guessing wrong and giving both babies the same treatment will result in the death of both children, whereas giving each child a different treatment saves one and gives the team the answer necessary to save the rest of the sick children.
His team tends to follow his lead. For example, when Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) is treating President Dibala, a brutal African dictator, Chase finds out that Dibala is planning a genocide. Chase takes matters into his own hands by using a blood sample from a dead patient to diagnose Dibala with scleroderma. When the team treats Dibala for scleroderma, the treatment ends up killing him. The episode and those following it highlight the moral and ethical ambiguity of Chase’s actions.
All of these morally grey characters are, in certain respects, likable. There is an odd sense in which their actions feel justifiable because we begin to appreciate their motivations, as we share them. Why shouldn’t John Dutton fight against progress to save his land and protect his family’s legacy? Maybe we wouldn’t kill to do it, but would we be willing to cross some other moral lines? Isn’t saving one child better than losing two? Is giving the kids two separate treatments really worse than giving both babies the same treatment when we don’t know if it will work? Why not kill one man to prevent the slaughter of millions? Even if we wouldn’t do what these characters do, their actions are not so evil that they become pure villains. These characters, to some extent, remind us of ourselves.
As Florence Mendoza notes, “It seems that, at some point, popular culture, TV in particular, stopped reflecting who we want to be, and started reflecting to us who we actually are…The reason, it follows, that morally relativistic characters are popular, is that we are a morally gray audience living in morally relativistic times.” Perhaps Mendoza is correct. Perhaps we are more morally grey than we’d like to admit. However, that doesn’t mean we should resign ourselves to a life of moral ambiguity. In fact, as Christians, we shouldn’t be morally grey.
Are We Supposed to Be Morally Grey?
As relatable as a morally grey character, being Christian and morally grey don’t mix. Why? There are at least a few reasons:
1. Christians recognize that God is present and active.
Morally grey characters may not deny God’s existence, but they tend to assume they must take matters into their own hands to achieve their aims. When morally grey characters get into difficult situations, they don’t consider the possibility that God will act through their faithfulness. Instead, they take matters into their own hands, acting with whatever resources they are able to muster in the moment. Christians recognize that God is present and active. We understand that obedience is the way that we collaborate with God—being faithful to God allows us to participate in all that he is doing in the world. Christians aren’t morally grey because we are theologically informed.
2. Christians understand the world rather than manipulating it.
Part of the reason morally grey characters are compelling is that they get things done. They often have a way of enacting “justice” when the existing systems fail (e.g., Chase saves millions from genocide by killing President Dibala, House saves patients no one else can by taking ethical risks, Dutton protects his family’s land until his death). Still, morally grey characters don’t understand the world even though they can manipulate it. Their actions, while accomplishing a particular aim, don’t fix the world—in many cases, the world gets worse. Christians understand how the world works because we know God. We understand that the underlying dynamics of reality involve relating rightly to the Lord, they involve an unqualified devotion to the Triune God (Deut 6:4-5; 30:20; Rev 7:14).
3. Christians don’t determine their own aims.
Morally grey characters set their own targets. They decide what they want and how they will pursue it. As such, for morally grey characters, the ends often justify the means. Christians don’t separate ends and means because Jesus is not solely our goal but “the way” (Jn 14:6). Our aim is to imitate Christ, which means that we set aside our desires and adopt the desires of Christ. As I note in Christian Resistance, “When we are willing to allow something other than Christ to determine our desires, we do not imitate Him. Instead, we reproduce through imitation a form of life patterned on distorted images of God.”
Morally grey characters do reflect the state of humanity. Apart from Christ, humans are left to navigate the complexities of the world on their own. They are left to determine which aims are worthy of their pursuit. Moral greyness, in some ways, seems to be a happy medium between sappy idealism and absolute evil.
Still, Christians cannot settle for being morally grey. We are those who fear the Lord—we stand in awe before the Triune God whose presence inspires both awe and respect. This awe and respect are like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. We are struck by its beauty while recognizing the dangers it poses. As we stand in the presence of God, we are amazed by his presence while respecting the danger of drawing near to a holy God.
Morally grey characters are tragic because they are rudderless. They have embraced a moral code and direction for life of their own making. They can compromise because they don’t answer to anything beyond their own conscience, though they are often subject to the law of the land or the law of the jungle. As we consider these characters, we should not celebrate their actions but recognize with gratitude God’s self-disclosure that governs and guides the lives of those who have committed to following Jesus Christ.
Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Paul Bradbury
