Trying to create a gray area: Hero's committing crimes.

You don't have any sympathy at all for the men who use the handmaids while their wives look on? No one in that situation is enjoying themselves. They don't have a choice. Sure, in theory they do, you always do, but sometimes you're just not tough enough to choose death over doing something horrendously distasteful. Sometimes you just do whatever you have to do to live, to procreate, to get out of bed in the morning.

If he believes that he has to do this, yes, it will work.

He was enraged, in the moment, that she tried to kill the baby again? I'm not trying to get into debate about women's rights or anything (so please don't think I am) but it is his baby too.

 

My understanding was that she tried to kill the baby right after it was born? Maybe not though.

 

I haven't read the book version of Handmaid's Tale in a decade or more. In the recent TV version, the primary "ruling" man and woman that we see are the ones who created and enforced the whole concept. I have some sympathy for the wife, because she didn't see herself becoming a nonperson even as she created a world where women are nonpeople. But essentially none for the man, because he designed it all.

But, yes, it's theoretically possible to have sympathy for anything. I guess my point is the point above--to a large degree, this guy architected the situation. His primary crime is not the murder.

Re (your post below) even if she immediately tried to kill the baby, that's not when he killed her--as I understand it, he stuck around for her to try some more times. Now, if she refused to let him take the baby away and was able to enforce that wish through law, I see his dilemma. But was that the situation?

 

All types of violence are justifiable to someone.

 

Yes, that's true, but even if you've watched the show (at least the first season) it's a pretty rough situation for him too (at least in the beginning). It can't be easy, having to do that while looking at your wife and knowing both of the women involved hate you for it, but you have to procreate right? And what other options are there? Including the wife is so that it's not seen as cheating, but man, it's got to be a little like hell on earth for all involved. At least in the beginning. (and I don't know if I even watched all of season 1, I can't remember). Yeah, I see why you wouldn't have sympathy for him though, but I guess everyone has different levels of empathy.

Yes, exactly.

I believe she tried to abort the baby multiple times (the first attempts) and then tried to kill the baby right after it was born, when it was a real, clearly alive, person, and that's when he killed her. But I could be interpreting incorrectly, I"m just saying that's how I read it.

 

There is an important point to be made here though; violence needs to be justifiable to the audience for them to forgive it. And of course this is a book, so they will be open to justifying more violence that usual (for revenge, for example is ok in a book) but just because the character believes they are justified doesn't mean that the audience will forgive them. For example, a character who conducts an honor killing where they absolutely believe this is the only option they have will not be forgiven if the audience doesn't equally believe that. You can still get some pathos when the audience doesn't forgive them; they'll understand why and see maybe it was hard and they didn't want to, but to the reader they have the option of just not doing that. A western audience will simply reject your book if there's some poor girl being murdered because she shamed her family and that being portrayed in a sympathetic light. Humbert Humbert from Lolita is someone who spends much of the book being repellent, frankly, even though he's the narrator and trying really very hard to build sympathy he doesn't quite manage to get there. The best he gets to is pitiable.

 

That's a fair point. I agree that kind of character is a bit of an exception; but I do think he's a genuine exception to the way that violence can be forgivable. There's a kind of dark glamour to Lector, he's never the hero. I'm sure we can all name lots of villainous types who the audience loves because they are cool or weird or crazy or interesting in some way. The audiences I think wants to see him more but they don't really want to see him as their hero either. He's a charming, clever, monster and that's a great kind of villain but I strongly doubt that you can write his character as a protagonist and make the reader genuinely like him.

 

Check out a series by Paul Cleave, first book is titled The Cleaner.

 

Royal bloodlines complicate it more.

 

@ChickenFreak He didn't force her to have his child she wanted to be with him and wanted the kid at first. I'm trying to display her as selfish and wrong. Same with him as well but redeemable.
I feel as This post is progressing people are losing sight of what I'm going for by muddying it up. I'm just going to go with it an hope it succeeds.

 

Ya know, I don't think this is entirely a lost cause. One thing you can learn is that people tend to be emotionally black and and white on these issues.

 

I've been trying to keep agendas out of my story and keep it within the boundaries of medieval (ish) fantasy. People seem to be more focused on the modern take on this subject and have lost the objectivity I was originally seeking. I don't want this interpreted as an attack by any means, I'm just needing a different point of view that some of the people on this forum seem incapable of providing without injecting agenda into it. I've received some useful advice, but I'm no longer getting what I was looking for.

 

Deleting; never mind.

 

I think the situation is a bit complex and convoluted... and it's coming across as a political statement against Freedom of Choice rather than a story, but that's my personal take. I don't see why he feels the need to force her to have the child when he didn't even bed her with the intent of having one, nor do I understand why having a child (one that she's likely willing to give up to the father or for adoption anyway) would have an impact on her "career choice". From the sound of it, the setting of the story is based on the real world, but I just don't find the situation believable.
And as @ChickenFreak mentioned, you're really limiting your potential audience by asking the readers to sympathize with a man who didn't wear proper protection during his fling, has a child that the mother never wanted, disallows her from having an abortion, and pressures her into having a relationship (something else she didn't want). Does he even feel any love or affection toward her to warrant starting a relationship?

Edit: I didn't see the newer posts, my apologies. If she felt that the child would have an impact on her aspirations, then why would she want the child at first? Now she just seems wishy-washy (although pregnancy could be a good explanation for that).

I will add a final, possibly controversial point to this post. If a woman and a man agree to have sex, then the woman decides she doesn't want to, but the man very strongly does and proceeds without her consent, that would turn the act into a sexual assault/rape. It is a very fundamental violation of human rights, and the capacity to make a decision regarding one's own body.

In your story, the woman thinks she wants to have the child, but comes to the gut-wrenching realization that it will have an impact on her way of life, and changes her mind. The man, only considering his own beliefs and not those of the woman he desires to have a mutual romantic relationship with, interferes with the decision, and has her restrained and monitored against her will until the baby is born. After enduring the mental and emotional strain of a pregnancy she wanted to prevent, the mother feels there's no other way out but to kill the child after birth, which is obviously a bad idea. The father rescues his child, but he doesn't cool his head and pick up his phone to call the police after getting away from her. Instead, in a fervent rage, he once again violates her will by taking away the only thing she has left, her own life.

Subtracting the mother's murder from the equation, both situations feel eerily similar to me. I couldn't forgive or sympathize with a rapist for their actions, because they're taking from their victims something that defines us as humans, the ability to rationalize and make decisions regarding our bodies. Neither would I be able to forgive or sympathize with the father, because he steals away the mother's ability to make a decision regarding her own body, albeit in a different way.

 

This is fantasy not modern. Everyone is missing the point I said what I said up a few posts ago to shut the topic down. I've repeated several times throughout this thread that this is a fantasy. It is not a modern fantasy, it's a fantasy. Concepts like this had no barring on past cultures. All your posts tell me is that you people don't read the thread and don't follow the posters questions. I've tried to make things clear the best I could. This forum has been frustrating for me the last few thread posts I've made. EVERYTHING turns into politics...or agenda. Why can't people just write their stories and ask for help or thoughts on if they are approaching something right? I'm trying to create an anti-hero. It shouldn't be about forced pregnancy and modern rights. People didn't have a choice back there most of the time if they lived or time if they lived or died through pregnancy. Basic human rights? People didn't even have those throughout most of history. People in a lot of countries these days still don't. (North Korea, to site one.) I feel this is something we take for granted.

People can't look at anything this as simple bad human behaviors and mistakes anymore without overanalyzing the crap out of it. IT's a story, no one was forced no one seems to be getting that through their heads. The lady wanted her child to begin with can can't make up her mind and flips back and forth on emotions. That and the fact that its fantasy people didn't have condoms.... birth control was a concept few cultures had, and if they had it or figured it out it stayed in the community or with the rich people. Even then people didn't birth control, they were god fearing and it was considered a sin which people were scared of making for their mortal soul. Besides most sex happens in the heat of the moment between people the last thing people think about is not wanting to get pregnant. People are more interested in their personal gratification or whether someone will like them. I know when I've had sex getting pregnant wasn't on my mind. I was supposed to be sterile and still had a kid. When I was a teen going through messed up abuse and molestation I didn't think about pregnancy I was worried about going to hell or being called a slut.

Everyone seems to be twisting a simple concept I constructed back in high school to a modern political agenda its bs...
If a mod sees this please for my sake and everyone else's shut this thread down...
This thread has pissed me off.

 

You asked for thoughts. You got thoughts. The fact that you got what you asked for is making you angry. But in that case, why did you ask?

When you want opinions, often those opinions aren't going to match your own opinion. That can be frustrating, but that's the very nature of asking for and getting opinions.

Your book may be historical, but it will be read by people in the modern day. Any readers are, also, likely to have thoughts. There are any number of things that were historically completely acceptable, that are regarded as horrible today. It's not realistic to expect your readers to regard those things as totally normal.

You seem to see murder as the only one of those things. But murder isn't the only issue here. You may want it to be the only issue, you may not want people to have an opinion about any other issue, but nevertheless, when you ask for thoughts, there's a risk that you're going to get thoughts. If your book also had, say, child abuse, or spousal abuse, those things might be totally normal in the historical context. But people are going to be uncomfortable with those things.

When you ask for thoughts there is a very strong risk that you will get thoughts.

Edited to add:

Contraception and abortion are not new concepts. They absolutely did exist in past cultures. As usual, Wikipedia is not all that reliable but is a good accumulation of concepts and sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control