WEEK ONE: Writing Empathetic Violence with Toni Morrison

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Infanticide is a horrifying violence, if not the most horrifying, a violence many writers would not attempt. Toni Morrison not only writes this horror, she leans into it, writing empathetic violence through the perspective of the perpetrator–Sethe, the mother–with tenderness, grief and later judgement delivered through the secondary character, her lover Paul D.

from Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison

Sethe knew that the circle she was making around the room, him, the subject, would remain one. That she could never close in, pin it down for anybody who had to ask. If they didn’t get it right off—she could never explain. Because the truth was simple, not a long-drawn-out record of flowered shifts, tree cages, selfishness, ankle ropes and wells. Simple: she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them coming and recognized schoolteacher’s hat, she heard wings. Little hummingbirds stuck their needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe. And the hummingbird wings beat on. Sethe paused in her circle again and looked out the window. She remembered when the yard had a fence with a gate that somebody was always latching and unlatching in the time when 124 was busy as a way station. She did not see the whiteboys who pulled it down, yanked up the posts and smashed the gate leaving 124 desolate and exposed at the very hour when everybody stopped dropping by. The shoulder weeds of Bluestone Road were all that came toward the house…. (163)

In the above excerpt, Sethe confesses her murder of Beloved, her infant daughter, who has come back to haunt her. Morrison’s brilliances and nuances are too many to list at once, but let’s take a look at a few:

    • FOUNDATION: Earlier in the novel, the narrator shares Sethe’s trauma, abuse, rape and more at the hands of the “schoolteacher,” creating a landscape of violence against her in which her own subsequent violence against her child may be interpreted. It is important to note that Morrison never tells the reader what to think, but rather, provides a landscape in which the reader may individually contemplate.
    • CONFESSION: Sethe confesses her crime with a mother’s love, a mother’s grief and an escaped slave’s trauma and fear: “…she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them coming and recognized schoolteacher’s hat, she heard wings. Little hummingbirds stuck their needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew….”
    • RIGHTEOUSNESS: Sethe provides righteous motivation, to save her children from a worse fate: “…over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe….”
    • JUDGEMENT: Later in this scene, Paul D. judges Sethe for her violence against her child. This provides the reader with a “moral ally,” a perspective through which the reader may judge Sethe even as the reader empathizes with Sethe in her impossible position as a traumatized, abused, raped and terrified mother desperate to save her children from the same fate.

What can we learn from Morrison’s mastery? Violence is a human quality present within even the most unexpected of perpetrators, a mother against her child. Violence is a quality present in our characters, no matter how “good” they are. Violence can sometimes be an ambiguous moral question and this ambiguity is a far more compelling exploration than overt, gratuitous violence. Violence can be written with a “tender” and lyrical syntax and diction, creating not only an irony within the language but also connectivity with the reader.  Understatement of violence centers the scene on the characters, immersing the reader far more deeply than overstatement.

Writing Exercise: Empathetic Judgement and Violence

Choose a character and scene from a narrative on which you are currently working. Open a separate document and copy paste the scene into this new document so that you keep your original words. Explore the violent scene with both empathetic and judgmental perspectives using two characters, the perpetrator and a secondary character, such as in Morrison’s Beloved.  

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Contributing Faculty

Rae BryantRae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. Her fiction, prose-poetry and essays have appeared in print and online at The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Diagram, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s, New World Writing, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications and have been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, &NOW Award and Pushcart Prize. She has won awards in fiction from Whidbey Writers and The Johns Hopkins University. She earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins where she continues to teach creative writing and is editor in chief of The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She has also taught in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. She is represented by Jennifer Carlson of Dunow, Carlson and Lerner.

One on One Creative Writing Workshop

If you would like to share your narrative, post it to the discussion board below and share it with your course peers. If you end up expanding this narrative into a fuller work and would like written, individualized feedback on it, we invite you to join us for a One on One Creative Writing Workshop.

Writing Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance) with John Gardner and Lorrie Moore

As with the chemist at her microscope and the lookout in his tower, fictional point of view always involves the distance, close or far, of the perceiver from the thing perceived. Authorial distance, sometimes called psychic distance, is the degree to which we as readers feel on the one hand intimacy and identification with, or on the other hand detachment and alienation from, the characters. (Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft)

Psychic Distance and the Funnel Effect

In general, once the reader has been brought “up close” to the narrative and the characters, it is difficult for the reader to pull out, again. It would be like a loved one suddenly treating you like a stranger. It is jarring. Unless the writer intends to jar the reader for an essential narrative effect, the story will benefit from following the funnel scheme, or rather, once the narrative has pulled the reader close, the narrative keeps the reader close until the end of the narrative, or at least, the end of the chapter or section.

John Gardner on Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance)

Careless shifts in psychic distance [authorial distance] can be distracting. By psychic distance we mean the distance the reader feels between himself and the events in the story. Compare the following examples, the first meant to establish great psychic distance, the next meant to establish slightly less, and so on until in the last example, psychic distance, theoretically at least, is nil.

  1. It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
  2. Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
  3. Henry hated snowstorms.
  4. God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
  5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul …

When psychic distance [authorial distance] is great, we look at the scene as if from far away—our usual position in the traditional tale, remote in time and space, formal in presentation (example 1 above would appear only in a tale); as distance grows shorter—as the camera dollies in, if you will—we approach the normal ground of the yarn (2 and 3) and short story or realistic novel (2 through 5). In good fiction, shifts in psychic distance are carefully controlled. At the beginning of the story, in the usual case, we find the writer using either long or medium shots. He moves in a little for scenes of high intensity, draws back for transitions, moves in still closer for the story’s climax. (Variations of all kinds are possible, of course, and the subtle writer is likely to use psychic distance, as he might any other fictional device, to get odd new effects. He may, for instance, keep a whole story at one psychic-distance setting, giving an eerie, rather icy effect if the setting is like that in example 2, an overheated effect that only great skill can keep from mush or sentimentality if the setting is like that in example 5. The point is that psychic distance, whether or not it is used conventionally, must be controlled.) A piece of fiction containing sudden and inexplicable shifts in psychic distance looks amateur and tends to drive the reader away. For instance: “Mary Borden hated woodpeckers. Lord, she thought, they’ll drive me crazy! The young woman had never known any personally, but Mary knew what she liked.” (The Art of Fiction)

Psychic Distance Writing Exercise with John Gardner

Using the above examples from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, create various psychic distances within your own work. 

First, choose an opening line from a recent writing project—short story, novel, essay, etc. In which distance is your original line written? 

Now, rewrite the line in the style of each example given by Gardner:

  1. It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
  2. Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
  3. Henry hated snowstorms.
  4. God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
  5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul …

Give ourself a day or two and then go back to the lines and read them aloud. Have a trusted reader read them aloud to you. Which line is your favorite? Would you entire narrative benefit from the same psychic distance?

Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance) in “Paper Losses” by Lorrie Moore

Although Kit and Rafe had met in the peace movement, marching, organizing, making no nukes signs, now they wanted to kill each other.

—Lorrie Moore

In the above excerpt, notice how the opening line begins with a good deal of distance written in third person. By the end of this opening line, however, the narrator has taken us from a distant past to the “now.” With that single word, mid-sentence, the narrator pulls us into the present moment, even though we are still reading a third person narrative. 

Rewrite the above line in the style of Gardner’s examples:

  1. It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
  2. Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
  3. Henry hated snowstorms.
  4. God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
  5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul …

Which is your favorite distance? How does it add to the overall effect of the opening line?

Which is your least favorite? Why?

How would the above line read if reversed? For instance: Now, they wanted to kill each other, although Kit and Rafe had met in the peace movement, marching, organizing, making no nukes signs. Does the reversal have the same impact as Moore’s original line?

Psychic Distance Writing Exercise with Lorrie Moore

Using Moore’s opening line as an example, rewrite the opening line of a current work. Begin wide and by the end of that first sentence, bring the reader into the close and present perspective. 

Next, try reversing the distance. How does it feel as you read it. 

Continue this exercise for each chapter or section of your work.

*You can also complete this exercise by pulling the reader close by the end of the first paragraph rather than the first line.

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Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance) Sources