Bad Guys Must Die, Part 2

Last time, I blogged about the tradition that the “bad guys” have to die by the end of our stories. One comment was by Alden Loveshade, who suggested that this is partly because every human has a reptilian brain that governs our responses in fight-or-flight situations. When stimulated by a character’s misbehavior, we flip to the “fight” part of the duo.

This is a really good point, but I wonder if, instead, the source lies with the primate parts of our brain. As primates, we are born to be social creatures. We constantly measure how others act toward us. Comforting or threatening, cruel or kind. We also measure each other’s relative status, which could explain why the fantasy genre has a fixation on royalty, even when most readers live in some form of democracy.

Part of the social calculation involved with our primate brains is that we demand parity. We want everyone to follow the same rules. And I say this as a teacher, who trains young people to follow such rules as sharing, taking turns, and waiting to be called on.

For many of you, I know, being taught to follow the rules is seen as sinister and oppressive. I would just point out that having these rules is what allows great numbers of humans to coexist in limited spaces.

Regardless, when one member of society misbehaves, our primate brains demand a consequence. And when the misdeed occurs in a story we are reading — within the privacy of our own minds — we feel impunity to demand the worst punishment: the perpetrator should die!

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