Literary Evil: No Explanation Needed

One of my first serious attempts at writing happened when I was sixteen. I don't know how I got the idea, or what it was for, but it was a little story about a group of warriors that fight the undead. It was simple, the shortest of short stories. Later on, I added more to the story. One of the characters, Weln, a mute archer, journeys alone to a nearby mountain. During that time, he remembers an event five hundred years in the past, his first encounter with the power behind the undead. At the top of the mountain, he finds his brother, the mastermind behind it. They fight, and Weln wins. They both utilize a telekinetic power granted by a purple pillar in a chamber of the mountain. The entire story is just over nine thousand words.

At one point in college I showed the story to a friend at work. After she read it, she said she didn't understand the purple pillar. Why was it there? How did it work?

But why did I need to answer those questions? To explain, let's look at some examples:

One of the most memorable evils in literature, for me, is Sauron in LOTR. At first he's a humanoid with great strength, then reduced to a lidless eye looking for jewelry. And yet the entire free world wishes to keep him from coming back to full power. He corrupts the hearts of men, twists Saruman into an instrument of evil and dries the land around him into a wasteland. But is he explained? Kind of!

He is the mightiest of the Maiar! Corrupted by the Great Enemy Morgoth in the First Age and most powerful of his lieutenants!

Which means nothing unless you read The Silmarillion, or you had access to J.R.R. Tolkien's private notes.

How does the ring hold his power? What will happen if he gets the ring? How is he just an eye on a tower? Where does his power originate? How did he see out of that helmet?

Elendil? Isildur? Hello?

Perhaps a more recent example. Stephen King's Dark Tower series is seven books long, and in typical King fashion, are a thousand pages each.

Quickly: Roland the Gunslinger tries to find the Dark Tower, the crux and structure that all worlds are based around. He wants to keep it from crumbling. It's supported, in the Universe's main world, by six infinitely old beams with the Tower at the center. The person responsible for destroying two of the beams, and nearly a third, is a man named the Crimson King. His goal is to tear down the Tower and bring about "Discordia," and rebuild the world in his image.

And again, if you only read the seven main books, you will have no idea how the Crimson King has his power, where it came from originally, what kind of creature he is, and what force he has at his disposal. But the explanation isn't needed.

Drinks are in the fridge. And try not to leave a ring on the Mantel of Darkness.

For both characters, they are the source of ultimate evil in their respective worlds, and both decry explanation. There could be some, sure, but in my opinion it would lessen the impact they have on the story. Instead of a powerful, unknown entity, that you just have to hope and pray you defeat somehow, you get a measurable quantity that you simply need to work around. It's no longer a fight against fate, but a fight against another person, even if that person is nearly nine feet tall, undead, or in command of armies.