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Maya Sinha's avatar

This is excellent and very on point for the novel I'm working on, about an imperfect, ordinary judge required to make a morally weighty decision and the aftermath. So much contemporary realistic fiction feels clever but "light," because it wants to be "sophisticated" by never committing to a moral position beyond Oprah-ish platitudes.

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Ruben Bix's avatar

A character's response to any event will show the moral weight he ascribes to it. It is normal, I think, both in fiction and in the real world, for different characters in the same milieu to have different value systems. I think the purpose of fiction is to ask questions not to answer them. If the moral perceptions of characters in a story are universally shared, it probably is a fairly simple story. I agree with your statement: It's important to remind ourselves that fiction is not concerned with solving philosophical and theological questions. Fairy tales are different of course.

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