It is not just mystery stories that display the motives of characters, though we often think of them first. All characters who are more than cardboard have motives on display. It is what drives them in the story and it is what the reader is trying to figure out.
The big question is, “Why did he or she do that?”
I finished a mystery this week where the lack of a motive was a terrible hindrance to the police and Scotland Yard. The search for what was driving the killer was massive. The book, River of Darkness by Rennie Airth, features John Madden as an Inspector from Scotland Yard. The setting is just after WW I and like Ian Rutledge in the Todd stories, John is haunted by the time he spent in the trenches.
There is depth to the story besides just the usual “who did it” and that comes from the “why”.
I am going to order the next two books in the Inspector Madden series, too.
I also finished a fantasy story, The Whitefire Crossing, by Courtney Schafer. I liked the story and the characters and I think there will be a sequel. I will watch for it. It is a fairly simple story as some fantasies go, but the motivations of the two main characters are what keeps the suspense going and then there is the terrible third character, a blood mage, whose motivations are horrifying. And yet, as I must go by what other characters say about him and the one picture of him toward the end where we see him in action, I am left feeling puzzled. His two apprentices see him completely differently. Which one is right? I chose to believe one and yet the way it was presented in the story leaves me wondering if I might have misunderstood something. Did one of the main characters lie?
By comparison, I am reading a fantasy book where I have no feeling of suspense at all. I put it on my challenge list and I am going to finish it. It has a dozen characters and they are not bad sorts at all. I wish them well. But the story is bland. I was searching for a reason why this story and Whitefire Crossing were so different. Oh, bad things are happening for sure, but…so what? I realized that the difference is that the motives are not in question. I don't know what drives the characters. The people care about each other and have created a family and I don’t want them to come to harm, but there just is nothing about them to make me care very much. I suppose in the next several hundred pages I will learn more about each of them. They will most likely be tested. I will most likely be worried and if someone is killed, I will be sorry. If one of the “family” betrays the others, I will be really upset. But to be honest, I am bored.
Another book that was instantly wonderful is Highways to a War by Christopher J. Koch. It is a fiction story, but it fits perfectly with what I learned by reading the true story Cat from Hue by John Laurence, a journalist who covered the Vietnam War.
Again, I asked myself what it was that drew me instantly into the book. Then I realized it had to do with motives again. The first chapter is titled A Locked Room which refers to a real room, but may also refer to the psyche of the missing man of the story.
The first sentence is:
In April 1976, my friend Michael Langford disappeared inside Cambodia.
Instantly, the question is why did Langford, a noted photojournalist, risk going into the country with the Khmer Rouge in power and the borders closed? Yes, another big question that is asked is can he really be dead, but the bigger question is why did he do it?
Another question about motive is why is his friend going to look for him?
There is a third mystery about the great, great grandfather of the missing man. Why was he sent to the penal colony in Tasmania? Why was the shame of that so terrible that the missing man’s father let it rule his life and his sons' lives?
The writing is good, but it is the questions of motive that are riveting.
An image from the book:
Page 82
Towering, mile-high, ink blue curtains flew together in the sky at extraordinary speed: as he watched, they met beyond Collyer Quay and its roadstead, and over flat infinities of harbor. Then the day went black, expcept for a tarnished band of light along the horizon. The shophouses, rice mills and crumbling godowns cowered; the hundreds of ships in the harbor, near and far, were dwindled to toys; thunder crashed like gunfire; the gutters and alleys bcame roaring silver rivers, and the upstairs shutter doors of Chinatown banged shut: crimson, green, celestial blue.
I have been reading the non-fiction book
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch for weeks. The story of courageous people is haunting, but what gives depth and importance to this book is that the author tries to show the motivations of the people as best as he is able to discover them. The motivations are complex and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is always examining his own. The problems MLK faces are terrifying. With other leaders, he tries to confront the evil of segregation that has still enslaved the black population of the South. The motives of J. Edgar Hoover, JFK and Robert Kennedy are also brought out. It is a huge book and I recommend it highly. But it is more than just a report on how many bombings, mutilations, and deaths occurred. It is a look at why the people kept trying in the face of the terrifying odds.
The stories of Albany, Georgia; of James Meredith registering at Ole Miss; of farmers in the delta who went to register to vote; of the Freedom Riders; of Rosa Parks and of Birmingham are gripping, but it is the examining of why they did it, why they persevered, what questions they asked themselves that makes the book worthwhile and a tremendous testament. We see what they learned. No punches are pulled. The criticisms of the groups and of MLK are laid bare and questions are answered as we read except for a big one…How did any of them keep going? When they were tired to the bone, when they were discouraged, when they were being beaten, jailed, sued for huge sums, lied to and bearing injustice in the courts, and especially when friends were murdered, how did they stand up again and keep trying?
Here is the full text of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which Dr. King explains his motives so well.
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/...
Here is a tiny part, but the whole letter is a must-read:
16 April 1963
…For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."…
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place.
The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.
But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ."
So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists…
There are two sequels by Taylor Branch:
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
Please share the books you are reading.
Diaries of the week:
Write On! Giant cockroaches.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Contemporary Fiction Views: The Baker's Daughter
by bookgirl
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Hill Country Ride for AIDS - a community of kindness
by anotherdemocrat
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early