Showing mass murder in a kid's book
Galastel did a spin off question based on one of mine. Mortal danger in mid-grade literature. And hers has spurred a new one for me.
This is an issue I've been grappling with for a while and I still don't have a solution for it. I had thought to wait until I was closer to writing that scene, but the other question has similar elements and it feels right to ask it now.
Background:
In my middle grade novel, kids from 1995 America time travel back to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. They arrive between the 9th and 10th Plagues and leave about 3 months later, shortly after Moses returns from the top of Mt. Sinai with the second set of tablets.
While my book is fantasy, I'm also viewing it as a historical novel, as if the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) were (more or less) factual. While I'm not claiming a religious history is real history, it's real in the book. Obviously I'm adding a bunch and changing a few things. But there are some events I can't leave out that are violent and problematic for my audience:
- The 10th Plague, the Killing of the Firstborn (Exodus 12).
- The battle with Amalek (Exodus 17).
- The punishment of the people after the Golden Calf (Exodus 32).
I can do a fair bit of handwaving and sheltering of the children, but I can't ignore these events. I can and do ignore several other violent events because they happen after the children return home. I also pick and choose how I talk about the horrors of slavery and plagues 1-9 because they happen before the children arrive.
The Problem:
#1 I can tell, not show. None of the Jewish households lose anyone and they are required to stay inside all night. They can hear about the deaths of people they didn't know in the morning.
#2 happens outside of the camp. A couple of my children are the only POV characters and none of them are part of the battle. They can hear about it briefly when it's happening and/or over. This one I could leave out or reduce to a line or two.
#3 is the one that concerns me. Moses has just returned from the mountaintop with the first set of tablets to discover that some of the people have forced his brother Aaron to create a Golden Calf to worship. The Levites (the tribe that includes Moses and his family and where all the kids are staying) did not participate in this and are not punished. The kids were pivotal in keeping them out of it (this is a large part of why they are here).
Here is the text, with some cuts noted, other words in square brackets are part of the translation (Exodus 32:17-35):
When Joshua heard the voice of the people in their shouting, he said to Moses: "There is a voice of battle in the camp!" But [Moses] said: "[It is] neither a voice shouting victory, nor a voice shouting defeat; a voice of blasphemy I hear."
Now it came to pass when he drew closer to the camp and saw the calf and the dances, that Moses' anger was kindled, and he flung the tablets from his hands, shattering them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf they had made, burned it in fire, ground it to fine powder, scattered [it] upon the surface of the water, and gave [it to] the children of Israel to drink.
[Cut: Moses talks to Aaron about what happened.] So Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said: "Whoever is for the Lord, [let him come] to me!" And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. He said to them: "So said the Lord, the God of Israel: 'Let every man place his sword upon his thigh and pass back and forth from one gate to the other in the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his friend, every man his kinsman.'"
The sons of Levi did according to Moses' word; on that day some three thousand men fell from among the people.
[Cut: Moses returns to the mountaintop and asks God to forgive the people.] Then the Lord struck the people with a plague, because they had made the calf that Aaron had made.
This is not something I can pretend didn't happen. It's the consequences for the main event in the book. Nor can I dampen it down to, say, Moses yelling at the people who made and worshiped the calf. We have forced drinking of the remains of the Golden Calf and a plague. And in-between is the wholesale murder of 3000 adult men with swords.
This is hardly the first middle grade story to have this issue. Any story about the Holocaust or other genocide must deal with it, as well as the nonfiction Diary of a Young Girl (by Anne Frank). And books set in wartime.
Question:
My question is not should I include mass murder and other horrors in my story, but how.
4 answers
That is a pickle.
The sons of Levi are obeying the words of their prophet, which they believe to be the words of god. They have no choice.
I suggest the kids see sudden activity, men and youths grabbing swords and knives, leaving. Your kids hear the angry words of Moses and stay in the tent with the others, but the quiet bustle of activity makes some just have to watch.
One or two might peek out and see the head of the household strike down someone but it isn’t clear who. Everything would be over quickly, but there would be screams and pleading and then silence. The silence is what is worse, for the reader - especially the older ones - will understand why the screams stopped.
Have the kids frightened by the commotion, not believing it is happening. Perhaps they distance themselves from the tragedy by reminding themselves that these people have been dead for millennia. The silence that follows will be eloquent and no one who took part will want to think about it, certainly not talk about it.
He returned to his family, the silence that had been so roughly disturbed had healed itself. Wiping his blade clean, he looked at his wife, the sorrow in her eyes a match to his own. Such was the price of sacrilege. “It was the will of God. We shall not speak of it.”
Of course, what do I know? I was raised presbyterian and given a bible for children.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43779. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Use the actual text that you gave in the question in your story.
You can either use it whole and then let the kids react to the event after the fact or you can break it up and show the kids' reactions as things are happening.
This approach kind of lets you off the hook. You aren't doing this to the kids, they are just there during this event.
It also lets you contrast their "modern sensibilities" with what happened. So, if your story is about them learning what it means to be Jewish, that lets you make this another learning moment in your story.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43881. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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You have two problems here:
- Lots of good people dying, "on stage" - in front of the children
- Good people killing other good people
The first is dealt with very well in The Hobbit, for example.
Already behind [Thorin] among the goblin dead lay many men and many dwarves, and many a fair elf that should have lived yet long ages merrily in the wood. And as the valley widened his onset grew ever slower. His numbers were too few. His flanks were unguarded. Soon the attackers were attacked, and they were forced into a great ring, facing every way, hemmed all about with goblins and wolves returning to the assault. The bodyguard of Bolg came howling against them, and drove in upon their ranks like waves upon cliffs of sand. Their friends could not help them, for the assault from the Mountain was renewed with redoubled force, and upon either side men and elves were being slowly beaten down.
[...]
“It will not be long now,” thought Bilbo, “before the goblins win the Gate, and we are all slaughtered or driven down and captured. Really it is enough to make one weep, after all one has gone through. I would rather old Smaug had been left with all the wretched treasure, than that these vile creatures should get it, and poor old Bombur, and Balin and Fili and Kili and all the rest come to a bad end; and Bard too, and the Lake-men and the merry elves. Misery me! I have heard songs of many battles, and I have always understood that defeat may be glorious. It seems very uncomfortable, not to say distressing. I wish I was well out of it.”
There is both a general picture of the battle, with many dead, and the personal connection - multiple beloved characters are in danger. Fili, Kili and Thorin are killed, bringing heart-wrenching grief. All the relevant emotions are presented to the reader, evoked, explored: the horror of the battle, the MC's fear for his own life, his fear for those he (and the reader) care for, a moment of despair when the battle turns against them, hope unlooked for when the eagles come, grief when, although they've won, a great many are dead.
There are no graphic details - no blood and gore. The scene is filtered through the narration. Bilbo is focused not on the visceral - not on cries of pain and spilt guts, but on other emotions. Almost, Tolkien paints not a picture of a battlefield, but a picture of a picture - the unsavoury bits have been cleaned up.
The "cleaned up" part is very noticeable in a slightly later scene:
There indeed lay Thorin Oakenshield, wounded with many wounds, and his rent armour and notched axe were cast upon the floor. He looked up as Bilbo came beside him.
A very emotional farewell follows. The focus is all on the grief of Thorin dying, there's no descriptions of bloodstained bandages and whatnot. I think that's the right way to go in a book for children. Gory descriptions would be "too much", overwhelming the reader and distracting from what you want to tell.
tl;dr: focus on hope/despair, grief, concern for friends. Avoid vivid descriptions of gore. Tell that people are dead, but don't show their death throes.
The second depends on how you want the people who do the killing to deal with the situation, emotionally. The children might be too young to participate in the killing, but when Moses calls "Whoever is for the Lord, to me!" they are for the Lord, aren't they? So they would be part of the party doing the killing, even if they don't actively participate, and by extension, your readers are party to that too.
In stories for children, good guys kill bad guys. Many goblins are killed in The Hobbit, and nobody bats an eyelash. But those people who made the golden calf - they were misguided and afraid. Can you truly paint them as monsters, whose death is nothing to be sad about?
You've got to decide for yourself how you want to present this situation, why those people deserve to be killed (or maybe need to be killed although they don't deserve it). You've got to figure out how those men who do the killing rationalise it to themselves. Only once you've got that, can you think of how you present it all to your child-protagonists, and through them - to your readers.
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This kind of killing is never done with a light heart. While you can easily jump over the act itself, you can show the turmoil and torment that goes through the mind of those that have to execute it. While it may seem that everything happened in the spite of the moment, it is far from being believable that Moses would immediately commit to such an action without a single doubt. As discussed in another question, Judaism is about challenging the Word, questioning, engaging a direct confrontation with religion. This moment must be the apex of it.
The kids will see a troubled Moses, one who would do anything else but resolve to kill his brethren. You can build all the tension in these moments, show your kids becoming afraid of the hardening of Moses heart. You could also show how the kids find it increasingly difficult to interact with him: after all if they come from a world where killing is never justified (unless there is death penalty in their home States), then a man who can commit murder out of choice is as far as it can be from their understanding.
Also, would they feel safe? The man is visibly on the verge to commit something out of the ordinary, perhaps something violent. One can give all the assurances but 5000+ years of history should be a big gap in terms of mind-sets, values, and moral standards.
You can actually use this to your advantage, and show how they mend their communication afterwards; show how Moses will endeavor to convince them that what has been done was necessary, and that it was just. Do not make it easy for him to come across this, or you may rob him of the depth of such a fundamental character, and you may rob your kids of their character development.
As for the killing itself, if you are afraid of showing it, then skip it. I exaggerate, but you could easily go for a dramatic cut: "Moses left the house with a dagger under his cloak and a stern look across his eyes. No one spoke a word of goodbye. The next morning, the sleepless faces of the kids were still frozen in terror."
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