Hello, Mythcreants.
I’m currently working on a series with a pretty violent setting, centered around a nation oppressed by a brutal regime and on the verge of civil war.
Some of my main characters are just as violent as their environment made them to be. Others are more diplomatic and peaceful but still competent fighters. And to that I’d like to add some who are active pacifists and use nonviolent actions to change things.
Do you have any advice on how to handle nonviolent characters in a world that tries to push them to violence? How to make them fit and interact with characters of the same alignment and objectives, but very different methods? And how to make them relatable and interesting for an audience who may find irritating characters that don’t solve the conflicts in more summary ways?
Thanks in advance,
Tom
Hey, Tom, great to hear from you again!
The key to non-violent characters in violent stories is to avoid making them seem naïve or judgmental. Fiction is full of characters who scold the protagonist for daring to defend themselves, which you want to avoid at all costs. Not only are such characters annoying, but also they can push unfortunate messages. In real life, it is much more likely that people will jump to violence when it isn’t necessary than to shun violence when it is, so demonizing non-violent ideals is a bad look.
A possible exception is if you’re portraying people who are silent when privileged groups are violent but speak up loudly when marginalized groups fight back. These people aren’t actually against violence, but they often act like they are, so portraying them negatively is A-OK.
But it doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re going for, so you’ll want to focus on how these pacifist characters try to get things done without violence. Do they deliver food and medicine to those in need? Do they lock arms to obstruct the passage of military supplies? Do they mediate disputes between the more violent characters?
There are lots of ways that non-violent characters can still push back against oppression, many of them difficult and dangerous. If your characters are going to argue over whether to use violence to solve a problem, it should be a practical discussion rather than a moral lecture. Perhaps there is disagreement over whether assassinating the imperial governor will aid the rebel cause or turn more people against them. So long as it isn’t “fighting back makes you as bad as them,” you should be good.
Hope that answers your question, and good luck with your writing!
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I think the key words here are “oppresed by a brutal regime”. A brutal regime wouldn’t stop just because someone uses non violence, and if there is a sort of UN in that setting, just the threat of violence would make non violent ways to be respected (like in “We are pacifists but if you kill enough of us, international forces will bomb you”.
If the setting is that violent and in a verge of a civil war i think it would be less about the world pushing them to violence and more of that characters being activelly killed by their oposition. Unless they flee and hide, which would do little favour to the character portrayal.
Since violence is the most severe repercussion to anyone, any other levels of escalation are ignored when the violence is used form the get go. The pacifist way is about de-escalating to avoid reach the violent phase, but in that setting that point is long left behind.
A regime labeled as brutal already kills pacific protesters, so more pacific protest wouldn’t make them change their mind.
One other useful note can be found in Star Trek and Leverage. The key is that if violence doesn’t really solve the problem, then it works to have a character that doesn’t like its use for pragmatic as much as moral reasons.
I reality, I should also note that both at the level of crimes and at the level of international politics, in modern times the use of violence is often problematic in terms of actually accomplishing a desired goal unless the goal is just violence for its own sake. Fraudsters make far more money than armed robbers, while even drug gangs have often resorted to negotiations rather than shootouts despite the anarchy and lack of trust inherent in a criminal enterprise. Meanwhile nearly all major wars in the 20th or 21st centuries lead to long term strategic failure for those foolish enough to start them. It really is the case that the only winning move is not to play.
I think this is an oversimplification. Those in wars that are lost by the aggressors are also using violence against them. The Axis Powers weren’t stopped through pacifism.
Many other wars, like the Vietnam War, were won with one power arming, training, and supplying one of the sides involved. That is only pacifism insofar as one side with a stake in the conflict isn’t fighting themselves.
In addition, many criminal organizations, like drug cartels, still use open (and often, deliberately publicized) violence against opposition, limiting how many people choose to oppose them.
Be sure that the consequences of their refusing to resort to violent methods fall on them, and not on innocents, too. A character who refuses to use violence to protect themself is sympathetic. One who refuses to act to save someone else is much less so, especially if refusing to use violence to intervene also has the effect of keeping the pacifist out of danger themself. At best that comes across as cowardice, and at worst as being so far up their own navel that they’re putting their personal philosophical purity above other peoples’ actual lives.
An example of doing this wrong is Releena Peacecraft from Gundam Wing. Releena is the ruler of a small kingdom who subscribes to an ideal of total pacifism in a wartorn world. While this initially makes her a sympathetic idealist, that sympathy quickly wanes as she stubbornly continues to refuse to do anything to protect her people from invasion and conquest if it means bringing weapons into her kingdom. While she eventually comes around to a more nuanced position, her philosophy costs a lot from of innocent people who aren’t her.
A good example of doing this right is the anime Trigun. The protagonist, Vash, is a technical pacifist rather than a strict one, in that he is willing to use violence but draws an absolute line at refusing to kill his opponents. This puts him in stark contrast to pretty much everyone else in the world, where even his own allies frequently butt heads with him over his refusal to kill. Vash always remains sympathetic because he goes out of his way to keep the bad guys focused on him instead of any bystanders, and throws himself in the way of any danger directed at others, keeping the consequences of his pacifism on himself to the best of his ability.
Game of Thrones has good portrayals of pacifist characters in a gritty, war-ridden world and they can range from cruel to altruistic in what their goals are and how they achieve them without outright violence.
Can you provide an example? I don’t remember any pacifist character in Game of Thrones.
While Varys is the only character to never use force throughout the entire series, during the first four seasons both he and Cersei strive to avoid war and don’t use force directly or indirectly, although Cersei often threatens it. Littlefinger initially seems like a pacifist along those same lines, but not for long.
I could be forgetting something(s), but they seem to fit the pacifist mold assuming that achieving someone’s death by poison is a loophole.
Oh, you’re talking about the show.
In the books there is a memorable scene involving Varys and a crossbow that would surprise you. Cersei have bullyed Tyrion all his life on account on he “killing” their mother. About littlefinger, he is as ruthless as he can be. He even defyed a Stark to a duel over Catelyn Tully (that he lost) so i don’t think is a pacifist worldview.
Anyway threatening to use violence (or making others use violence) is not pacifistic in my opinion.
I strongly agree with this. It’s very easy to try to hold a moral high ground with a pacifist stance when you’re not the one who would be suffering from lack of more forceful action.
For a real world example, look at WWII – appeasement was presented as a means of ensuring peace, but the relevant countries were not the ones being invaded, and nowadays, the appeasement leading up to WWII is generally seen as short-sighted at best and delusional at worst.
On that note, it’s common for the privileged to downplay the significance of forceful resistance against them, in favor of idolizing pacifism, while justifying their own violence. For example, we’re all taught in school in the U.S. about how pacifist movements like those run by MLK won rights for Black people. There’s little to no attention on how Black people came armed to voting booths to defend their right to vote, or how they had firefights to protect their communities from being razed. Any mention of violence will generally be presented to show that Black people only made gains when they chose to remain defenseless as they allowed whites subjugate and murder them.
Other whites don’t get this same treatment. A white president calling in the military to enforce desegregation of schools is never presented as a bad thing, but groups like the Black Panthers, if they come up, are often presented as extremists who were ultimately counterproductive.
My point here isn’t that pacifism isn’t actually effective – because it definitely is, when organized with a specific plan and goal in mind – but that this (often misleading) portrayal of pacifism to the exclusion of everything else plays into the idea that suffering oppression is an inherently heroic action, and that fighting back against oppressors is inherently immoral and short-sighted. This helps the oppressor by placing the burden of morality on the oppressed, rather than the oppressor – you are immoral if you use violence to stop violence from the oppressor. You are a hero for enduring oppression, but the oppressor isn’t a villain for subjecting you to it.
This is part of what facilitates the whole deal of “trauma porn” – privileged audiences see Black characters as heroic for being victims, which, in many cases, allows a white protagonist to be the real hero for standing up for the victims.
On the same token, the idea that violence against oppressors is immoral is also in line with the common idea that it’s the responsibility of the weaker party to prove that they don’t deserve to be a victim, rather than the stronger party to prove that hurting the weaker party serves a meaningful purpose. A long time ago, I read a book where an alien council was leaning towards blowing up Earth because of wars and famines. This was presented as a completely rational option, rather than the completely WTF deal that it actually was, and it was on the heroes to argue why the entire planet shouldn’t be wiped out because of wars and famines.
Younger me thought it was deep, but now I just see it as questionable. That logic is used to justify things like the transatlantic slave trade, among many others.
Back to my point – presenting pacifism as inherently superior in a situation where violent resistance is justified, especially when the pacifist isn’t suffering the worst consequences of such a stance, serves to demonize the weaker party for trying to render the stronger party unable, rather than unwilling, to subjugate them. I guess I’m more focused on this angle because, of the two extremes you typically see with pacifism in media, this is the one that’s supported by the narrative. When pacifists aren’t shown to be out-of-touch idealists allowing (or, even worse, facilitating) evil through inaction, the subject of violence often gets bothsidesd, with pacifism being sanctimoniously presented as the truly enlightened stance. (Hell, there are works which somehow manage to present fighting back as morally dubious, even as the obviously evil belligerents, show that they cannot be reasoned with to stop their unprovoked aggression.) The debate of practicality rarely comes up; when it does, either pacifism is presented as delusionally idealistic, or violence is presented as an “easy” solution that’s ultimately counterproductive at best, or that’s completely senseless at worst.
Even worse is when killing the main villain responsible for everything is presented as unforgivably immoral, but that was never a problem as the heroes mowed down wave after wave of mooks just trying to collect a paycheck.
Overall, I feel fiction has a lot to explore on the topic of pacifism, because it’s rarely explored with the nuance it entails in real life. It’d serve to show pacifism as a realistic option with its own practical benefits and drawbacks, instead of presenting one side as obviously wrong.
In a game I roleplayed with my brother, we had a pacifist wizard. He still used his powers to protect himself and his friends, but he went into healing instead. So, in battles, he’d stay at the healing tent, quickly working to save the injured. He did this both during when he was on the evil side and when he switched to the good side, too.
A Latin saying goes:
“Si vis pacem, para bellum.”
Meaning: if you wish for peace, make ready for war.
If a nation (or organization) is looking to violently gather more resources for them, who shall they take those from?
Their neighbor who advocates peace and pacifism and has no military, or
Their other neighbor who also advocates peace and pacifism, but manufactures and stockpiles weapons and maintains a standing military trained in their use.
On a personal level, if a crook is out to steal some cash, will they attack the six foot tall martial arts teacher who everyone knows has a permit to carry a firearm, or will they go after just about anybody else?
Just look at the world. Which nations are basically invulnerable to actual military attack? Those armed with nuclear weapons. No one is suggesting attacking Russia, for instance. Pakistan and India deescalate matters right quick, whenever a fight breaks out. India is a good example of actual pacifism in action. They had the advantage of nuclear weapons over Pakistan for a long while and didn’t start a war of annihillation.
The privilege of advocating and practicing actual pacifism belongs to those who are the least likely to actually suffer violence.
Ask yourself why your character would think pacifism is a viable strategy for achieving anything. What is that character’s privilege?
It is one thing to be prepared in case of an attack and another to attack.
(Also, when it comes to ‘six foot armed martial arts teacher or everyone else’ – there’s loads of videos of people who thought petite women made easy targets and got beaten up for it by those petite women, as martial arts usually don’t rely solely on strength).
It is difficult to be a pacifist among humans – we are predators and it shows in our behaviour. Yes, when you’re in the middle of a fight for your life, being a pacifist is only an option if others fight for you (which technically means you’re not pacifist, as you rely on other people’s violence). Seeking an end through pacifist means, though, can work. Once the fight has started, your pacifist options are done for, but you can still employ them earlier.
That’s something I love about the Brian Helsing series. Brian is a monster hunter (he becomes one without wanting to) and his job, technically, is to kill ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, such as vampires, werewolves, demons, and so on. Yet, in most books, he does solve the problem not with violence (and he has access to considerable power), but with other means. He convinces a group of sea nymphs who eat humans to add to their diet to try human-made food instead. He transfers the demons from Hell (where they, too, suffer) to a space in the Australian Dreamworld, where they can live in peace. In the following book, he sends the waking Cthulhu to the now empty Hell, so this is the world Cthulhu destroys instead of earth (the demons don’t complain). Brian can wreak havoc among his enemies, but he prefers to seek another solution. That’s not full-fledged pacifism, of course, but it shows that even someone who could solve all problems with violence alone doesn’t have to.
Pacifism against oppression is most effective when done in a way that applies pressure to the oppressor, disincentivizing them from continuing whatever they’re doing. This can happen in a few ways, such as:
* Putting the oppressor in a position where it’s more costly to continue than to comply with demands. This is how actions like strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience work.
* Undermining the oppressor’s purported justifications. If the oppressor claims that their actions are in self-defense or for the protection of others, that justification loses weight when they’re seen using violence against defenseless people.
* Influencing undecided or hesitant outside parties. If an outside party otherwise feels that two sides are equally justified, they’ll likely be inclined to morally side with a weaker, seemingly helpless party over a stronger party throwing their weight around. If an outside party morally sides with the oppressed, but is hesitant to get involved, they might feel morally obligated to do something if they see violence being used against defenseless people.
Of course, these things aren’t always feasible, or the most practical option. Besides the obvious advantages, successfully fighting an oppressor undermines their perceived power, which might encourage people who would otherwise tolerate them to resist. An outside party might be willing to support rebels if the rebels have proven to be capable of winning. An oppressor might be less likely to do something they know is likely to prompt a destructive and costly response.
How effective either is depends on the situation. Of course, a combination of methods can be perfectly reasonable.
I think if you want to portray the pacifists as sympathetic in the face of violent oppression, they should support the parts of the rebellion that do use violence – or at least some factions. They might ally themselves with one violent faction that strives to fight all oppression but push back against another faction that just wants power for themselves.
There are many ways to support the fight against oppression that don’t involve taking up arms yourself, but without undermining those who do use violence in self defence/defence of oppressed people. Pacifism usually means working towards peace for everyone, not merely keeping one’s own hands clean.
No rebellion could succeed without unarmed support. They need food, clothes, equipment, shelter, etc. Of course someone who is part of a fighting force or directly supplies them with necessities doesn’t come across as pacifist just because they don’t personally pick up a rifle.
But a group of medics who help civilians as well as injured rebels could very well be pacifists. They are doing important work that the rebellion absolutely needs to succeed, but they’re not using violence. Same goes for groups organising the distribution of food for the oppressed people without asking if they are civilians or armed rebels. Similarly, reporters could uncover, document and publicise the truth about what actually happens while being nonviolent themselves. In fact those groups will have strategic benefits from staying nonviolent.
Pacifism is a matter of morality, but it is also a strategy that can work in tandem with other strategies employed by other groups. In a country on the verge of civil war, pacifists will want to prevent a war, but once war breaks out, they should shift strategies to mitigating its effects and ending it sooner rather than later.
There is some nuance to be had with a character or group that advocates for peace and doesn’t use violence while also supporting those who do use violence where necessary.