Morally gray characters have been “in” for a while in literature, particularly fantasy, as writers seek to “nuance” the ideas of good and bad.

Instead of seeing that a character who, for example, murders people is clearly not nice, readers now are supposed to see that they have reasons for their actions. Maybe some past trauma made them this way. Maybe there’s an explanation for the murdering, and readers are supposed to believe there’s some good that will come of it. It’s sort of a necessary evil. Maybe the character feels mildly bad about the murders. The momentary bad feeling doesn’t actually stop the character from continuing to murder, but it’s supposed to convince readers they’re secretly a softie at heart. They can’t be terrible if they feel just a twinge of regret while killing some children, right???

Personally, I don’t believe many authors have fully worked out how the moral grayness of their stories should play out, and I see this particulalry in the stories where authors seek to explore the aftermath of a protagonist’s being morally gray. If the character has a redemption arc and is meant to end not morally gray but actually “good,” a person readers can unequivocally admire, many books really lean into the idea that “feeling bad about what they did” is enough. The character gets to the end of the novel, stops murdering people, thinks it was a bit horrible they used to do that, and then moves on with life. They’re a good person now.

But is this enough?

I think of children’s media and the lessons society wants to teach children, and it’s quite obvious there’s an agenda there to show that you have to make restitution if you do something wrong. One example is the Disney Junior show Super Kitties. It follows a group of cats who transform into superheroes and save the day. They confront villain characters, who might be stealing something from other animals in the city or making a huge mess in the public park, etc. And every single episode ends with the Super Kitties telling the villain they “have to make things right.” Often the villain will just morosely say, “Sorry I stole all your fuzzy socks,” and the Super Kitties are clear that’s not enough. There’s more! They give a hard stare until the villain says, “And I’ll give all of your socks back.” Then viewers get a montage of everything stolen being returned.

We have these lessons for children’s shows, but when it comes to media for teens and adults, apparently the standards no longer apply. We expect preschoolers to behave better than we do ourselves.

If a character in a novel does make restitution, it often seems to be in a small way, and definitely an anonymous way. Maybe at the end of the book, a character who’s been an incorrigible thief finally pays back some of the money they stole. There are parameters, of course.

• First, they themselves are now in a position they don’t really “need” the money themselves. Giving it up is not a sacrifice; they will not be skipping meals or losing their housing by giving back what they stole.
• Second, they will give back the money to someone who “needs it most.” If they actually stole from a poor family in the course of the novel, they will pay that family back. They will not be paying back any rich merchants or nobles who “don’t really need the money anyway.”
• Third, they will leave the money anonymously on a doorstep or windowsill, or they may quietly pay off a family’s bill. They will at no point admit they were the one who stole the money to those they wronged. They certainly won’t be apologizing in person. An anonymous note is the best one can hope for.

This is all incredibly wishy-washy. The characters are still avoiding consequences for their actions. They get to feel good without first feeling uncomfortable. They just throw a sack of money on a doorstep in the dead of night, and all is well! They can move on now, without fully confronting the actions they took. I don’t know why this is, if writers truly do not feel more than this is necessary, or if they feel like making the form of restitution longer makes the book “preachy.” Throwing the sack of money can be done in two sentences. Having the character reveal themselves as the thief, apologize in person, deal with the reaction to that, and then deal with any consequences of giving up money they could themselves have used could take a chapter. A whole chapter demonstrating what it really means to be sorry and make amends.

And, of course, this is a somewhat “easy” example. If you have some money, paying money back to someone else is not an issue. Characters who have done something worse, like all those murderers in novels, would have to do something much greater to compensate for the lives they have taken. It seems no one knows what that would even be, so they simply do nothing. Except sit around and muse on their regrets about it once in a while, as we know. The murders then are just character building, something the protagonist must live with the weight of themselves, not something they think of others having to live with.

I would love to see new takes on this in novels. I would love if the horrific things characters have done not were simply be washed away once they feel a smidgen of misgiving about them. If I met someone in real life who stole money and then said they “felt bad” but never gave it back, I would not be impressed. My feelings would not be much more charitable if they said they gave some of it back secretly, but only to that one guy who really needed it. I think my standards for book characters can be just as high. It’s interesting to read about all kinds of people in books, of course, but I do draw the line at being repeatedly told that all these criminal characters “aren’t that bad” if they just have some sad feelings now and then. They are bad, and I will continue to think they are bad if they don’t actually make right all the things they have made wrong!