Readings

For this reading, the avenging angel has selected a target whose crime is to have sideswiped a mother of four, killing her and orphaning four children in the process. The law has been unable to locate him, but our avenging angel has connections and secures “justice” the law has been unable to provide.

A quick word on Elaine’s writing before I cut to my point. Her command of language, artful manipulation of readers’ empathy couples in  this novel with a delightful sense of humor to render an otherwise outrageous and (in places) macabre story both thoughtful and  entertaining. The reading, however, did spark a discussion and I’m going to share it with you.

Elaine’s skillful manipulation of readers’ emotions was noted, which in turn led one of the folks in the audience to speculate that author’s sympathetic treatment of the vigilante murderer could be construed by some to be tacit approval and his observation raised (obliquely), the question of an author’s ethical responsibility. Some, he opined, might conclude as a result of her treatment of the murderer that it was somehow okay to take the law into our own hands when the law itself failed. 

Setting aside for the moment that Hard Bite is a work of fiction designed to entertain, does the question raised remain valid? What if any lessons do readers take away from the works they read in books or see in films? Scientific inquiry into the correlation between viewing violent content and a propensity toward violence in any form is mixed. An APA study spanning a fifteen year period showed a positive correlation between violent content viewed during the formative years 6-10. But as Psychology Today notes in one of their posts to their online magazine, correlation between ideation and action remains an open question and stories of lawbreakers with altruistic intent are literally cultural bedrock.