tales of an ordinary girl

I enjoyed the ideas and the story in this book, but the characters drove me nuts. It's not really the writing that I have a problem with so much, but the notion that people can be characterized as "good" and "evil".

I have a problem with absolute good and evil or good and evil personified. In fiction I'm more lax in my judgments, but I think that Trent could have made a better point if he wouldn't have made his characters so one-sided.

Issues rarely have only two sides. They're too complex to be divided into right and wrong, good and evil. Yes, I can sometimes say with absolute certainty that something that is being done in the world is wrong. But that doesn't make the people behind it evil.

The mob may perform horrific acts when goaded by dishonorable words and actions, but they are in the end still people. They're the people like the ones I interact with everyday. They're people just like me.

Cyril and Peter were like Gargamel and Azrael - cartoon characters, except without the comedy. They had their own dreadful inflictions, but nothing they did was ever remotely portrayed as human.

I realize it's a tried and true tactic to make a person into something alien or hateful in order to dehumanize him or her. When we go to war it's considered patriotic demonize the other side. But rational, intelligent people should be able to look past the devil horns.

Even so, every group to some extent, personifies the people who are outside the group as different whether they're not as smart, not as moral, not as trustworthy, not as charitable, or in some other way not as virtuous or not as good. It's an instinctive urge we all feel.

To give over to that urge is the real tragedy. In the end it's really ideas that are the true enemy.