And the Moral of THAT Is. . .

Moral tone isn’t what the story comes out and says—Aesop’s fables end with morals, which are something rather different and which we will not go into here. Both fiction and non-fiction have moral tone, but how to recognise and analyse it is quite a study.

By analysing the moral tone of a book, a reader or critic comes closest to actually getting into the author’s head. This is because moral tone is what the author actually feels about his story—not necessarily what he is trying to get across to his readers, but what he actually thinks about the world and the things he makes happen in his story. So, moral tone is very personal. It is what we commonly call, in modern and post-modern times, a ‘worldview.’

No matter how well or poorly you write, you cannot keep your worldview out of your book. That is why a Christian author will always write Christian books. This sounds odd—we think perhaps that some Christian authors are hard to tell from the non-Christian ones. It is true that many of these authors write about the same things as the others. It is very true that sometimes these authors put un-Christian things in their books. That, too, is part of their worldview. Some Christians do not believe that these things are un-Christian, or some believe that it is all right to compromise in order to write a ‘good’ book. But there are always little things—little things that the hero believes are wrong, little things that the author has taken for granted—that come through the story. Sometimes they are well-hidden. Sometimes we can’t find them. But sometimes we can.

Take a common fictional example: Hero is in tight pinch. Villain (enemy soldier) is about to find out that Hero is enemy. Villain asks Hero what Hero’s name is. Hero lies.

This is a very stereo-typed example. It is never written quite as plainly as we have written it above. The author will use certain tools to make the hero get to this point, and the lie will often be in the dialogue. Generally, the author will not remind you that his hero just lied. Oftentimes, the reader will accept the lie of the hero, because he is used to this happening in books. The author will not usually tell you whether the lie was right or wrong. He leaves it to the reader, because, like most authors, he feels that this event is necessary, but he is not ready to say whether it was good or bad.

The reader is left to think worse of the hero if he chooses.

(Note: Although the nature of this article does not enable us to be entirely objective, we do not offer an opinion on this question.)

It would appear that we cannot know if the author thought the lie right, or if he thought it wrong. This is not so. We often can tell, if we look very carefully. We can assume that the author has not preached a sermon here or elsewhere about the sin of lying (authors of fiction should avoid preaching sermons). But we can analyse his own view of this lie by other elements in the story.

We might first summarise the hero. What kind of hero is he? Is he somebody who is intended to be Practically Perfect in Every Way? Is he an anti-hero who has already done quite a few objectionable things? Does the author bring any consequences upon the hero because of this lie? Does the author studiously avoid the subject of lying for the rest of the story?

By answering these questions, we can often come logically to an idea of the author’s own view of the matter.

Sometimes the author will make the hero justify his actions. Generally, the author is trying to justify his actions, too. But sometimes the hero is intended to be justifying his actions because he feels guilty. We can often identify this by whether the hero ends up being punished, or telling the truth later, or admitting in the end he was wrong.

It quite often happens that we, as readers, overlook wrong things because it seems they should happen or must happen to save the heroine, or because we grow accustomed to them. Hollywood, a genre we include in fiction, though which does not come anywhere near to literature, likes us to grow accustomed to things.

Say, for example, the hero cheats the villain in a duel. This is against all the rules of chivalry, but we accept it because the villain is stupid and the hero is smart; the villain is bad and the hero is good (or at least, was). We may even justify it with petty excuses, such as ‘It was a battle of wits, and the villain was stupid.’ But of course, good heroes are not supposed to value wits above honour—decidedly un-English.

(Note: We decline to state which Hollywood production in particular was used in the above example. )

We must watch out especially for the things we justify. It is often because we truly think them wrong—however, it is sometimes because someone else thinks they are. There are, sadly, many books—children’s, adult’s, fiction, non-fiction—that have faulty moral tone. Many children’s authors in the modern and post-modern era revolted against the preachy boredom of Elsie Dinsmore and What Katy Did and wrote books they believed were more enjoyable for children—and often were full of the author’s modernity. This is not to say that all of the books written in this time were bad. If we might be allowed to voice an opinion, we think a lot of them were very good—far better in style than Elsie Dinsmore. But there were always a few that one read and said, ‘My, that doesn’t sound right!’

I might mention Fantastic Mr. Fox, by Roald Dahl: not a badly written book, but based on the assumption that the fox can steal from the farmers because the farmers are trying to starve him in his hole. Mr. Dahl completely overlooks the fact that the farmers are trying to kill Fox because he stole from them first. –Only another example of basing our judgements on the ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of the characters. Since the farmers are a disagreeable lot, they are automatically the bad guys. Mr. Dahl does, however, come out and say part of what he thinks. He writes,

Suddenly Badger said,

‘Doesn’t this worry you just a tiny bit, Foxy?. . .All this. . . this stealing?’


‘My dear old furry frump,’ [Fox] said, ‘do you know any one in the whole world who wouldn’t swipe a few chickens if his children were starving to death?. . .You are far too respectable.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being respectable,’ Badger said.

‘Look,’ said Mr. Fox, ‘[The farmers] are out to kill us. You realize that, I hope?’

‘I do, Foxy, I do indeed,’ said the gentle Badger.

‘But we’re not going to stoop to their level. We don’t want to kill them.’

(Note: Omissions made for sake of brevity.)

Now, we like Dahl immensely. He wrote some good books. He is an excellent author, but he has a few skewy notions on stealing from people who have more than you. He seems a little socialistic.

Then, of course, there are those books that seem to be simply wrong, for no apparent reason other than that the author thought he was right. There is The Space Trilogy by that fine Christian author, C. S. Lewis. Few Christians in the English-speaking world have not heard of C. S. Lewis. He is much noted for his non-fiction book Mere Christianity and for his fictional Chronicles of Narnia. However, we have objections to his over-use of classical Greek and Roman gods in his literature. And we do not mean that they simply alluded to those false gods. In the Chronicles, they are used as if they were centaurs or unicorns or some other type of mythical creature. His fictional works Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra seem to suggest that there were ‘little gods’ in the universe who rule over and in the planets—striking one as a sort of pantheism. These works, however, have their better attributes, and we only use them here for demonstration.

Yet, as we have said, sometimes the moral tone is not so obvious. It must be dug out of the story by rational thinking—and a concrete understanding of our own beliefs. There are little indicators here and there throughout. Sometimes it is the very physical themes (reappearing ideas, such as Nazis, gun fights, or spies, that are not necessarily symbolic or philosophically important to the story {although Nazis are always philosophically important}) that give the author’s worldview away. It is often, too, the light in which the author presents these physical themes.

(Note: The editors had to coin the phrase, ‘physical theme’ to distinguish these elements from the other Themes which we have written about previously.)

One could probably take a college course on Moral Tone, if there were one. Readers must realise that all literature is biased, and writers must realise that they cannot attempt to please everyone. Aesop himself reminds us that, if we make the attempt to please all, we will please no one.

We have said that we as analysing readers must have a concrete understanding of our own beliefs. This understanding is important because, if we do not possess it, the things we theoretically ought to disagree with make their way into our minds and affect the way we think—unconsciously, of course. There is also the danger that we will recognise the fallacy and know we disagree with it, and never quite understand why. In everything we read, we must be prepared to disagree with the author on one or two points. But we ought to know why we disagree. This is part of what makes a man.

In closing, there is but one thing we would like to mention. In any interpretation of an author’s book, the interpreter can easily stray from the author’s original meaning. Therefore, we must not be arrogant and presume that our judgements will always be right. Discernment must be used, but likewise, any author who allows himself to be published subjects himself to misunderstanding. A man must be careful of what he says. He must be more careful in what he suggests. But the greatest mistake, which can throw the best author into the gutter, is what he seems to suggest.

(In writing this article we too subject ourselves to the possibility of being misunderstood, and are willing to receive any objections our readers might have as to the things we have said here.)