I have a character in my story who had the misfortune of running into a character who represents my attempt to deconstruct the fairy-tale archetype of the "vigilante enchantress". The sort of character who goes around inflicting people with debilitating curses to punish them for bad decisions or behavior. In this case, a teenage boy named Jordan, driving on a Mojave Desert backroad at night, passes a woman and her daughter trying to flag him down to stop and help them because their car broke down. Due to a mix of having places to be and being wary of getting involved with strangers in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, he doesn't slow down and drives right by. Then the daughter runs out into the middle of the street in a desperate attempt to get him to stop, completely oblivious to the fact that she did it way, way too close for the car to stop in time. The daughter is run over and dies instantly, and when Jordan gets out of the car, shell-shocked, to see what happened to the girl, the girl's mother, who turns out to be a powerful wizard, delivers a savage beating, throws him into her broken-down car, curses him with permanent blindness as punishment for refusing to stop to help those in need, and drives off in Jordan's car, leaving him for dead on the highway. One of the things I hope to convey with this plot is how utterly fucked up this sort of fairy-tale vigilante justice is. That Jordan's decisions did not in any way justify what the mother did to him, and that she's a self-righteous vindictive monster who could not accept that her daughter's death was an accident and was simply scrambling for excuses to justify her desire to do horrible things to Jordan for revenge. The problem is that when I'm writing Jordan's thoughts as he's lying blind, bleeding and broken on the side of the road, waiting to see if anyone will come by and stop to help him, I'm struggling to write an emotional state that sits well with me. Anything I write always feels too close to one of the two extremes of "guilt at realizing this is how those two must have felt being stranded in the desert" and "indignation at being all but murdered when the daughter's death was an accident" (he hasn't figured out the blindness is permanent yet). I can't find a middle-ground between the two that doesn't feel like it's in some way too close to one of the extremes, and so my every effort to write his thoughts as he's lying there alone in the desert night feels in some way ingenuine and unrealistic. Like he's either completely devoid of backbone, or a selfish asshole completely unshaken by the death of a child right in front of him and too focused on his own pain. And I don't want either of those to be the case. Any advice for how to walk this characterization tightrope?
I'm not sure he would have processed his thoughts that far to arrive at guilt or indignation. Lying broken and blinded in the dark of the desert, I think he would only be focused on his own survival and the threat of his own death.
It seems natural that he would veer between those two states for some time before finding any equilibrium, if he's able to do that later. Especially immediately after the incident. Adrenaline would be high unless he's in shock, and extreme emotions seem appropriate. But this would be after he emerges from the initial state of pure survival instinct that takes over and makes you utterly calm in the immediate aftermath. It begins in that moment when the accident is happening and everything slows way down. You drop into a detached observation mode where it's like you're not really in the body, you're just seeing through the eyes etc and not really feeling the pain yet or anything. It's like the brain/body shuts down useless hysterics when immediate thought and action are required for survival, and gradually that state fades and the pain and emotions start to rise up like a tide. If he's whimpering or screaming or something he might not even realize the sound is coming from him for a while, he might get annoyed and wonder who it is.
How much of an accident was it, though? He saw them by the road, which means that he should have at least slowed down. That is just common driver's sense I would think. (Or nevermind, maybe it's not common sense.) Good point, but I think this would depend a little on the person. Someone who has accepted their state and their potential death, may go on deeper reflections.
It depends on what kind of person he is. Maybe at this point he's impatient and self-centered, and maybe this incident starts him toward becoming more mature and concerned about other people. It might also make him aware of his own mortality for the first time.
He's a teenager, so his reaction does not have the benefit of a lifetime of experience and reflection. It would most likely tend to panic.
The way to show that vengeance is a fool's errand is to have the vengeance backfire on the one who meted it out.
Hmm, I really don't see how he would arrive at feeling guilty for not wanting to help them at first. If anything, the mother's actions have confirmed his initial assessment that he should stay away from strangers trying to stop him in the middle of a deserted road at night. He would likely feel bad for the girl, yes. Any decent person involved in a fatal incident, no matter how innocent, will feel bad in such a case and wonder if there was something they could have done. Yet that would only come later for Jordan as described, once he has the time and leisure to review the incident in his mind. Right now his sole focus will be on survival and afterward, perhaps, on making sure the woman can't harm anyone else or even that she gets punished for it.
I think this is a good moral dilemma for the story and you should explore it. How long is the story? Is it a short or a full novel? I think Jordan’s thoughts in the immediate aftermath would be dominated by fear and panic, not guilt or anger. I wouldn’t try to force the ethical dilemma into one or two scenes. Instead, let it be unresolved as long as possible, and use it to drive tension at the climax when it finally gets resolved.
