So, I generally leave my wife out of my blog entries. No deep conspiracy there—she really does exist, I assure you. It just seems the most likely way to not find myself sleeping on the couch at night! But I’m going to have to make an exception today, for reasons that I hope she’ll forgive.
You see, she’s currently taking an ethics class as part of an ongoing Master’s program, and the parts of that course spilling over into our home remind me of academic material I thought long gone from my dusty memory banks. Plebe or Freshman year philosophy is the last time I remember even hearing words like “deontology” and “utilitarianism” … nonetheless, here we are, in the living room, discussing the ramblings of Immanuel Kant!
Yet, the discussions themselves reminded me of something a bit more fun than the circular academic arguments of philosophers. They remind me just how far outside the scope of accepted societal behavior—even the relatively brutal norms of the 3rd Century BC—my favorite Roman fictional character Fulvius lives, breathes, steals, and even kills. Oddly enough, it’s the lack of ethical standards, his willingness to defy accepted social practices, the apparent lack of any conscience whatsoever that makes him fun to read and, to be brutally honest, to write.
But why is that, exactly? Shouldn’t you as a reader and me as a writer both be repelled by his absolute lack of morality—by ANY definition of that word? Shouldn’t we both set the book aside and say “This is bad … HE is bad” and slowly back away from the story altogether? But we don’t, do we? Just like we couldn’t stop watching the series “Breaking Bad”. There were precious few redeeming qualities to be found in the central figures of that story line … but we ate it up! Week after week, month after month, we tuned in with fascination to watch the fictional life of a high school chemistry teacher turned criminal meth producer.
Again, the question of why? Why aren’t we repelled by such a story? Why do we keep reading, keep watching? Is it, perhaps, because we understand why it is the character is acting the way he or she does? Does this knowledge somehow alter our perception of their actions? Knowing that Walter White from “Breaking Bad” was dying of cancer, and cooking meth a means to take care of his family after his imminent death, altered our perception of his actions. While none of us—I hope—suddenly saw his increasingly illegal activities as “good” or even “moral”, it seems to make a difference that the audience was able to understand how he got there. And how things got so wildly out of hand.
The same is true of my boy Fulvius, I suspect. He’d be considered a living nightmare to anyone who met him in his element, preferably a dark alley with no witnesses. Definitely not someone you’d want to meet anywhere. Born in a brothel to a prostitute who died when he was still a baby, Fulvius literally grew up on the streets. His only “family” the women of the night who kept him alive out of respect for his mother. As a very young child, then, Fulvius was forced to fend for himself, to learn the harder lessons of life generally reserved for much more mature students.
He knows nothing of mercy or remorse. He doesn’t experience guilt as no conscience has ever been planted within him. He knows nothing of right or wrong, weighing every potential interaction by whether or not it’s likely to produce personal gain or loss. Life and death, to Fulvius, are merely two states of existence, separated by the fine edge of a blade. A blade he is, more often than not, holding in blood-stained hands.
Having lived a life absent both love and affection, he still finds both uncomfortable, and prefers a more transactional relationship in his dealings with members of the opposite sex. He kills without hesitation, simply another means to an end, and rarely wastes another moment reflecting upon those he’s dispatched. Fulvius is, by any ethical definition, a very bad man.
But part of us can understand how he became that way, right? How highly do you think you’d value human life if you’d watched it bought and sold, even rented, and discarded like kitchen trash for five, ten, twenty years? It’s easy to see how even a “normal” person might become calloused after such a long interval in that environment. Even easier considering that Fulvius was born into it, raised and educated on the streets, in the back alleys, amongst thieves, murderers, prostitutes, and politicians. Okay … so I’m being a bit facetious there, but you get the idea. Fulvius knows no other life.
His introduction to normal society, of course, ends up being the Roman legion. And not just the legion in normal times, but the legion at a time when Rome finds itself in mortal danger. His world is upended and he’s introduced to a set of moral and ethical standards that couldn’t be further from those of his wild and dangerous youth. In fact, the only constant between the world in which he matriculated and the one into which the state cast him as punishment, is that both greatly reward violence. And violence, of course, is what Fulvius does best.
With all that in mind, just like with Walter White and his unintentional drug empire, we watch, we read, and I write. Much like viewing an accident scene, we just can’t tear our eyes away from them. Neither Walter nor Fulvius have magically become more ethical, more moral, or even more noble, yet understanding how they got to where they are in their lives makes it easier for us, it seems, to justify following their horrific stories.
I won’t lie, having a really bad guy as the “good guy” in the story has been more fun than I ever could have imagined. Toying with our perception of good and bad, right and wrong, made writing Fulvius a blast. And the hint, at the end of “Debt of Dishonor” of even the slightest amount of ethical growth twisted the story in a wonderfully satisfying direction, just when it seemed to be wrapping up. Continuing Fulvius’s education of the world beyond his dark youth has been, oddly enough over the past year, just as much fun and I greatly anticipate the release of the sequel to “Debt of Dishonor” in the coming months.
I hope you’ll join me then in following the exploits of this sorry excuse for a human being. And live vicariously through the fictional account of a man with no conscience. But be forewarned, for as Nietzche so famously taught “…if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
Be ever on your guard!
M. G. Haynes