Life of the Morally Grey

Assalamualaikum & good evening,

In the fictive world, writers are wont to delineate their integral characters into clear-cut personalities of good & evil. White againsts black.

Rowling gave us the opposing forces of Harry Potter & Voldemort, Tolkien fleshes out the antagonism of Aragorn & Sauron, Lucas spun a story of Luke Skywalker against the Emperor.

But what strikes me is, us real-life characters, are not easily classified into black & white. More often than not, it is likely grey. That is why sometimes I find it hard to relate to these black or white characters. Because they may at times seemed unrealistic in the real setting. The white characters are sometimes holier-than-thou, uptight, preachy. The black characters are hell-bent on destruction, & being evil for evil’s sake.


Perhaps realizing this, the aforementioned writers did include grey characters in their literary works. Rowling dishes out Snape, an ambiguous character, whose true intentions are only revealed towards the end of the magnum opus, in The Deathly Hallow. Snape’s actions was mainly motivated by his undying love to a certain character. Tragic doesn’t even describe Snape’s story. Tolkien put forth the character Boromir, the son of the Steward of Gondor, who was seduced by the power of the One Ring, believing that he can wield it to destroy the evil that is Sauron. Lucas introduced to us the tragic Darth Vader, who was turned into a monstrous being to save his wife.

Maybe, because in these grey ones, I see the most correct way to describe humanity. These grey characters stumble in their lives’ path, make mistakes. But at the same time, they sometimes do acts of good. There is always the question of redemption.

Which is actually similar to the stories of most of us, right?

Because in the end, Snape eventually helped Dumbledore & Harry to bring about the downfall of Voldemort, Boromir died at Amon Hen defending the Hobbits, & Darth Vader threw the Emperor to his death by the core reactor. These men have sinned, because they make choices that they thought was the best. But they turned out right in the end.

So, don’t be hard on yourself if you make mistakes. At the cost of sounding a bit lame, “to err is human, to be perfect is divine”. What is more important, you learn from your mistakes.

Wassalam. Happy Eid Adha to all Muslims.

p/s: Sorry Dayah. I made your tag later. Been a bit busy now.