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The Strange Allure of Darkness
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
— Romans 12:21 (NIV)
If you're new here, welcome to A Writer’s Notebook: What It Means to Be Human. This blog offers small extracts from longer essays I’m drafting for a book by the same name. A common thread runs through every post: the question of what it means to be human. And if you're among the daily visitors, I believe we share something important, a love for what is good, a value that quietly permeates this space.
There’s a moment in The Hunchback of Notre Dame when Judge Claude Frollo, Disney’s most complex villain, stands alone in the cathedral, tormented by lust disguised as piety. He gazes into the fire and sings of sin, damnation, and desire. The scene is unforgettable, artistically brilliant, yet deeply unsettling. Not because it lacked truth, but because it so completely surrendered to darkness.
As a writer, I try to write about what is good and has human value. Not because I’m naïve or blind to suffering. On the contrary, I see it too clearly. But goodness needs a louder voice. Evil already has a press team with wide circulation.
Why do we glorify the grotesque? What strange thrill do we find in the demonic, the deranged, the depraved? I recall as a teenager going to see a movie that featured the occult. There was something unnerving, uncomfortable when I left the movie theatre that day. I still have grotesque images in my head half a century later There’s something disconcerting about how easily we engage with darkness even celebrate it. It’s in travel documentaries where a rural village is shown not through its music or harvests but its masks, macabre, skeletal, fearful. Why do such images dominate, as though the heart of a people could be summed up in the sinister? Who decided the grotesque was more “authentic” than the gentle, the spiritual, the existential and the good in the human family?
Perhaps it’s because evil shocks—and shock makes us feel alive, like a slap of cold water waking us from numbness. Or maybe we no longer believe in goodness as something real. We treat it like sentiment, like child's play, while evil is seen as complex, sophisticated, even artful.
In literature, the villain is often more deeply drawn than the hero. In film, darkness wins the awards. In conversation, we’re quicker to dissect corruption than to celebrate integrity.
But this fascination with darkness isn’t just aesthetic; it’s spiritual.
C.S. Lewis observed that evil is always a parasite. It has no life of its own. It feeds on the good, twisting and deforming it. That’s why evil is so theatrical, it must draw attention to itself because it has no substance apart from what it corrupts. The Devil is in the details.
What, then, is evil? At its core, it is the rejection of love. It’s the wilful distortion of what is true, good, and beautiful. It’s Cain raising his hand against his brother. Pharaoh hardening his heart. Judas betraying a friend with a kiss.
Sometimes it’s loud and brutal. Sometimes it’s just the slow erosion of compassion, the muting of conscience.
So why do I write what is good? Because I believe the world is aching for it. I believe beauty restores the soul. I believe kindness is radical. I believe that the light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. When I write about a gentle act, a word of forgiveness, a glimmer of grace, I’m not ignoring the shadows or my shadows ; I’m defying them. There is courage in joy. There is rebellion in hope. In an age that glorifies cynicism and darkness, to write the good is a kind of revolution.
And I want to be part of that.