Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

What are your thoughts about these quotes?

I'm writing a character who values integrity and they're seen as the villain in the story, but I was wondering your thoughts on these quotes from her:

“I don’t care if it’s fair, it’s life... It’s not fair that a two year-old died of (censored because Yahoo -_- )... it’s not fair that a mother who dedicated her whole life to her children dies alone in a hospital bed because her children don’t care... Life has never been fair, life has always been reality, and reality doesn’t care about your sense of morality.”

I would just like another perspective on this view of the world (for context, she is angry at the hero for lying to their friends/family instead of being honest).

2 Answers

Relevance
  • Anonymous
    2 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    I find a slight technical problem at the end of the paragraph; the thing is, when you say something like "Life this, that...", you're dealing in abstractions. No problem, there's a place for solemn, grandiose declarations in stories, etc...

    The problem is that, when you reach the sentence "life has always been reality", you're concentrating too much abstraction in one place, and it dilutes the effect; both "life" and and "reality" are broad concepts, and the reader can go: "Whaa? Wait a minute, let me write down the equation..."

    (In addition, a declaration of that kind has a vibe of "contained emotion"; and a person who's saying that, carried away by emotion, wouldn't use such a complicate phrasing, with two words so "cerebral" together...)

    I would either:

    a) take "reality" out completely of the paragraph, and keep referring singlemindedly to life: "Life has never been fair, life plays by its own rules", for example.

    or

    b) Transition completely from "life" to "reality", taking both terms as close synonyms, for the sake of clarity and sentence flow: "Life has never been fair; reality doesn’t care about your sense of morality."

    As for the stance revealed by the declaration, it can be summarized by "life ain't fair", "life ain't moral"... It's a partial vision of life, a bit of the "half empty bottle" kind -easy to explain given that she is angry-. Also, as many complaints do, it has an embedded feeling that "things could be different..."

  • Anonymous
    2 years ago

    It's a very one-sided argument and doesn't really have anything to do with having integrity.

    I don't think it's a case of life being unfair it's our broken idea of what's unfair. It's like if we're not winning in life then it becomes unfair. I dislike preachy characters.

    She's not being honest just giving an opinion.

    Just my opinion

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.