Is it the responsibility of a writer to introduce morals into his or her story?

[Lyra [in Wonderland]]

I'm thinking about Twilight. And the millions of impressionable teenage girls who are reading it and getting all the wrong ideas about what a healthy relationship is because a completely anti-feminist novel became super popular.

But I'm really quite torn about it. A writer shouldn't be limited, right? And a reader shouldn't be limited, right? But surely there should be some balance... right? What do you think?

 

[L22]

*You can basically do what you like. Your conscience is not the source of creative thinking, but helps you live your life based on your values and beliefs.

*Your writing, based on your conscience will be your interpretation of what is right and wrong anyway.

*People portray murder, suicide, rape, magic, cannibalism and all sorts of other detestable things in their novels. This does not mean the author is trying to persuade impressionable people to do these things, but are just using their creativity to paint imaginative worlds and gripping stories with interesting characters.

*Age restrictions used by adults allow them to govern what their children watch, read, ect.

*Most Disney and other children's books/movies create unrealistic or unhealthy ideas of what love is and paint unrealistic worlds. That doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed. Fantasy is always going to be unrealistic in some way or another.

*In the end, what responsibility is there to creativity? Don't be too creative? Limit your creativity? You'll find the answer will be the total opposite. Explore every dark corner, as well as every bit of light you have in your being. Embrace yourself as completely human with feelings that must be expressed, no matter how obscene or repulsive, wonderful and spectacular, morally correct or incorrect and impressionable or not.

If the reader doesn't like what they read, see or hear, they can always walk away or stop reading and go do something else. That is their responsibility

 

[RedStar]

Well, the thing is, Stephenie Meyer probably *does* think she's introduced morals into her story. Her morals, unfortunately, are totally different from mine. Stephenie Meyer has written a book in which it's better to get married at 18 a man you hardly know and have a baby than it is to have sex before marriage and in which relationships involve the woman being a wife and mother and the man being in charge. To her, that *is* making a moral point, I believe. My guess is that she thinks that is morally right.

I, on the other hand, think it's an anti-feminist borderline fundamentalist nightmare. But I don't doubt that if I tried to introduce my own morals into my work, plenty of right-wing conservatives would be horrified by them and claim that I was the irresponsible one.

 

[Lucky]

You have the right ideas, to me.

 

[Corrienne McCalister]

Of course Meyer thinks she wrote something morally right. She's Mormon. I don't know a lot about the religion, but I have several Mormon friends, and I do know that the women are supposed to be submissive to men. (Though I'd guess most of them wouldn't admit it or call it that.)

In talking about Twilight, I don't think it's that big of a deal. A lot of girls can relate to Bella, and want the same things that she does; wanted them before the books came out.. A lot of other can't. The ones that can't, don't like it and hopefully simply don't read it.

What's important is that an author doesn't write something that they believe is morally wrong, I think. We have to consider what we're 'saying' in our work. We can't write without saying something, so what is the message we want to take to the masses?

 

[Sal Monella]

In some countries you can be jailed or executed for what you write. In countries where there is freedom of speech, this is not a problem, and so it lets an author and a reader do what they will without impunity - as it should be.

 

[kelly]

Stephanie Meyer is deluded. I don't think she understands much about... well, anything. But especially not about teaching young girls morals.

I've said before that I don't believe what makes a writer or a book good is morals. But I also think that what a writer's *intention* is when writing their work should be taken into consideration. Some writers have no intention at all of writing a wonderful book with morals that tell you to follow your dreams. And that's okay. But then there are some writers, such as JK Rowling, that *did* intend for morals to be taken out of their books. As we all know, JKR succeeded profoundly with this, and it's one of the reasons the Harry Potter books are so great. Morals alone are not, of course, the only reason these books are great. It's not even the fact that there *are* morals that makes them great. It's the fact that JKR *intended* for there to be morals, and she went so far above and beyond with this that it has changed lives. I think it's her success in reaching her intentions that makes it great.

Stephanie Meyer failed. Meyer intended for there to be morals in Twilight, too. She intended for the moral to be, "Love who you want no matter what other people say!" But this failed because the relationship turned out to be abusive. So what it's really teaching girls is, "When your father says he's concerned about how much time you've been spending with your boyfriend, just ignore him and don't take what he's saying into real consideration."

So yeah. I think you should look at what the writer's intention was when writing, and whether or not they did what they intended. Because Meyer did not intend for the books to come off as anti-feminist, and actually intended for Bella to be Little Miss Independent, Meyer failed.