Too sadistic for my MC?

So, for context, the story is set eight months after a bioterror attack cripples the US government and results in a wide breakdown of authority, which means roving gangs of savages and all that fun stuff. It's not so much gray and gray morality like The Last of Us, it's more darker gray vs lighter gray as the "good guys" still attempt to be good.

Anyway, the MC is a member of a survivor settlement that's attacked by raiders. The MC's settlement wins, but one of her closet friends is killed in the battle. When MC finds out one of the raiders survived, she flies into a fit of rage and kills him by by wrapping a zip tie around her neck and pulling it tight, then watches him suffocate to death.

My sister read this sequence and when she finished, she said the death was too sadistic even in for a post-apocalyptic setting and that she was "beyond disgusted" by MC for doing that and suggested I change it to something that's more merciful.

I just want to get some thoughts. This isn't a "Should I write the story this way?" thread.

 

It depends on how close they were as friends, what the death meant to your MC and how much she really lost because of the death. If her entire world is shaken by the death, and she's overcome by rage, then I might justify those actions by clouded judgement and intense emotions.

It also really depends on your character's personality. Is she bold and not afraid to speak her mind? Personally, I would have a character snap like this only if their personality allows for it. A reserved character who mostly goes with the flow is less likely to set out by herself and do something like this. Unless, of course, the death serves as a turning point that drives your MC's character development.

 

People do things like that in war, but then I think they're severely troubled by it for the rest of their lives, and probably don't think of themselves as objectively "a good person" anymore. Maybe I shouldn't even say anything, I was never involved in war or killing of this kind. But I think it could result in serious issues, maybe PTSD. People spend their lives in therapy after doing things like that, have trouble sleeping and suffer nightmaers etc. And I think they wrestle with whether they're a good person or a cold blooded murderer, and maybe come down on different sides of the issue at different times, but never again see themselves as a good person unambiguously.

 

How long has she been in the post apocolypse world? The long she has spent in the might makes right world. The longer, the more she would abosrb the savage temperment, just to survive.

 

The question to ask is this: Is it keeping in with her character? The way she executed the raider is vengeful and brutal. Is the MC a vengeful and brutal person? Had there been anything up to this point to indicate such?

 

Moose, just helped make the point I was going for. In a world descending into madness, the character's arc could make the same descent. Which depending on how your story goes could lead to a redemption arc for the MC. The friend's death and the MC's resulting actions could be driven by simple vengeance, or a sign of her descent to the madness gripping the world. What is the theme of this project? What arc for the character fits best with your theme? The point about your target audience is one to keep in mind. My questions here are mainly to help get the creative juices flowing, and don't need an answer for anyone but yourself.

 

Revenge by its very nature is sadistic. Because the whole point is to make yourself feel better, so it's often a very selfish act. Therefore, it's very difficult to do revenge plots. You have to make your character act justly and not cross the line into sadism.

One thing you could do if you insist on having this scene is making something at stake for the MC. If this person has another victim that the MC has to find out where they are or they die, then it could make the MC's actions a little more understandable. Having to get that information as soon as possible means making some dark decisions and sacrificing her humanity.

There's also a lot to be said if there's no real consequence to the main character's actions in doing something sadistic. Like a tangible feeling of emptiness.

 

The revenge angle can work, provided the response is not unbalanced with the event that sparked the desire. An eye for an eye is acceptable. Both eyes, the tongue, and ears is not.

 

But someone is sadistic when they inflict pain just because they enjoy seeing someone suffer. Revenge is totally different. Its when you get back at someone who did something bad to you. You don't do it because you enjoy seeing that person suffer; you do it because they wronged you.

I'd say that the MC is sadistic if she has a history of going the extra mile to make others suffer instead of just taking them out.

 

Thanks for the responses.

They're only eight months into it. It's worldwide, but some countries are hit harder than others and the US is the hardest hit because it was the epicenter. Everything hasn't entirely collapsed as the government and military are still out there (albeit severely fractured) and the situation is different in different places. Some areas and locations are maintaining a fragile stability, some are lawless wastelands in the vein of Mad Max, and others are outright battlefields (for example, early on the MC and another main character briefly discuss "talk of" a civil war on the East Coast that they've heard through second hand sources). Long range communications have broken down, so they can't get any definitive info on any place they don't physically visit.

Though they haven't known each other long, the MC and her friend had become pretty close as a result of a spontaneous romantic encounter that the MC had trouble processing because both she and the friend are straight women and it left her in a confused state, which is only exacerbated by the death because it happens just inches from her. And I did decide to write it as leading into a bad spell of PTSD and depression. She's later called out for the act by the leaders of the settlement as having gone "too far" and they flatly tell her not to ever do it again.

It's not something she does all the time. In fact, that was the first time she'd done it. She threatens a captured antagonist with it to keep him in line, but doesn't follow through since he behaves. She'd only seen it done once in the first few months of the apocalypse by someone else, which was a very traumatic event where a small group of people she's trying to protect is killed by rogue National Guardsmen or a gang impersonating the NG (I purposely didn't specify since it's not the point). The person she witnessed doing it, a Vietnam vet, was the only survivor of that group aside from her (they were away when the killers showed up) and himself flew into a psychotic rage before doing it to the only surviving killer. And he ended up committing suicide not long after, which suggests that even after what he saw, he later realized he went too far. The MC isn't one to lose control or fly off the hinge and after being called out on it, regrets doing it.

It's not the whole plot, it's just a small but critical subplot that's part of MC's evolution. MC somewhat recovers from it by the climax, but she won't ever "get better". The main plot in the current arc (I'm going to do multiple since I've basically reach the end of it at around 20,000 words and I haven't even started the third chapter) is defending a small settlement from an army of raiders. At least for this arc, the theme is redemption because the traumatic even early on (the death of the small group) left MC jaded and demoralized. It's only when the people of this settlement accept her, that she's given a chance to "make it right" and (as cliche as the following metaphor is) relight the fire inside her.

 

I would think, if MC is after revenge, however she does the killing, it would be related to how her friend was murdered.

If MC is simply after vigilante justice, then a simple head shot or throat-cutting would suffice.

Just my two cents...

 

She was shot in the head during a raider attack on their settlement.

 

It isn't just about that though. It's also about how up close and personal it is—"close enough to kiss" as they say. It's one thing to shoot somebody from a hundred feet away, but it's totally different when you're standing right in front of them, can see their eyes up close, and you do it with your hands and can feel the zip-tie smashing the throat and breaking the bones in there. And up close you see their eyes and their face as they look at you in dawning horror and accusation.

Of course, it is a gruelling survival scenario, and yes, everyone has to learn to kill to survive and all the rest of it. Maybe this isn't the first time she's killed someone. But it's the ability to do it so personally and feel their flesh as you do it, and still go through with it, that makes it particularly blood-chilling, to the POV character as well as their compatriots I would think, unless of course they've all already gone through similar things.

I guess that's the main difference—if this is a new level of bloodthirstiness and murderous rage for her or for them. And it also depends on whether it's the first such killing you've taken the reader through. How civilized are these people still? If they've accepted the savagery of their new world and acclimated themselves to it already then it's probably no big deal, but if this is the first such experience it's a huge deal.

 

And of course, as always, a lot depends on how it's written. We can't tell much from the casual way it was described above. Maybe OP could freewrite it up and drop it in the workshop for a little feedback?

 

Lol it is kinda scary how much you know about killing and hurting people, but good to have you in here for these questions.

 

I don't understand how anybody could do such a thing. A head isn't round enough to roll properly, and think about all the blood slinging around everywhere. What a mess!

 

I hate how true that is...

 

I remember being something like nine years old and seeing this terrible group of people hold a severed cat head by its ears on Facebook. That's when I started to realize that humans really have no limits to what they do. And then I also came to understand that if it's possible, someone has done it, no matter how screwed up it is.

 

I think you have explained how to have it believable in a story - kick away all their props and put them through traumatic experiences

 

This is basically what was covered in the Milgram Experiment:

The Milgram experiment(s) on obedience to authority figures were a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, 40 men in the age range of 20 to 50 from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner". These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

The experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions, with every participant going up to 300 volts, and 65% going up to the full 450 volts. Milgram first described his research in a 1963 article in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.
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Though really that's more about testing people's willingness to do terrible things because an authority figure told them to. It's the basis of "We were only following orders," which of course was the main excuse given by all the Nazi soldiers and prison guards. I think it's a big step past that to work violence up to the point of murder and torture by yourself, without being given orders, which takes away your sense of personal responsibility. As Moose said, the first requirement is to stop seeing the other people as actual human beings, which is really not difficult to do, as proven again and again throughout history. Look at all the witch hunts, which of course political versions of are going on today all around us. And the hard part is to see it, not only in "them," (it's easy enough to do that), but to see that we all have the same capability in us. And that's a matter of psychological projection, where we want to see ourselves as decent no matter what, though most of us are actually far from it, and we project our own worst traits onto other people. Again, projection is easy to see in others, but most won't see it in themselves or even the capacity for it. We tend to think somehow we're exempt or we're perfect little saints. This is why anybody can do terrible things and rationalize it after the fact, and still see themselves as good people. And this is why shadow work, which allows you to see your own tendency to project, and to retract your projections, is so beneficial, but is something most people would never do.