Wicked: The nature of good and evil

A. Read the following passage on the nature of evil from the novel Wicked by Gregory Maguire and do exercises B & C below:

“Evil isn’t doing bad things, it’s feeling bad about them afterward. There’s no absolute value to behavior. First of all—”

“That’s why I say it’s merely an affliction of the psyche, like vanity or greed,” said a copper magnate. “And we all know vanity and greed can produce some pretty astounding results in human affairs, not all of them reprehensible.”

“It’s an absence of good, that’s all,” said his paramour, an agony aunt for the Shiz Informer. “The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace.”

“Pigspittle,” said Avaric. “Evil is an early or primitive stage of moral development. All children are fiends by nature. The criminals among us are only those who didn’t progress…”

“I think it’s a presence, not an absence,” said an artist. “Evil’s an incarnated character, an incubus or a succubus. It’s an other. It’s not us.”

“Not even me?” said the Witch, playing the part more vigorously than she expected. “A self-confessed murderer?”

“Oh go on with you,” said the artist, “we all of us show ourselves in our best light. That’s just normal vanity.”

“Evil isn’t a thing, it’s not a person, it’s an attribute like beauty…”

“It’s a power, like wind…”

“It’s an infection…”

“It’s metaphysical, essentially: the corruptibility of creation—”

“Blame it on the Unnamed God, then.”

“But did the Unnamed God create evil intentionally, or was it just a mistake in creation?”

“It’s not of air and eternity, evil isn’t; it’s of earth; it’s physical, a disjointedness between our bodies and our souls. Evil is inanely corporeal, humans causing one another pain, no more no less—”

“No, you’re all wrong, our childhood religion had it right: Evil is moral at its heart—the selection of vice over virtue; you can pretend not to know, you can rationalize, but you know it in your conscience—”

“Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven’t wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted, of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.”

“Oh no, evil is repressing that appetite. I never repress any appetite.”

- taken from Wicked by Gregory Maguire (p. 370-371)

B. Find synonyms for the following words in the passage:

1. ________________________ illness

2. ________________________ arrogance

3. ________________________ bad

4. ________________________ nonsense

5. ________________________ corporeal

6. ________________________ an evil spirit

7. ________________________ with enthusiasm

8. ________________________ quality

9. ________________________ related to the reality we can’t see

10. ________________________ on purpose

11. ________________________ related to right and wrong

12. ________________________ wickedness

13. ________________________ a rude person

14. ________________________ restraining

C. Write a paragraph, explaining which of the definitions above most aligns with William Shakespeare's, as he expresses it in Macbeth. Use textual evidence from the play to support your answer. Which of the above theories most closely parallels your view?