The Limits of Evil

I just completed a wonderful book by Neil Gaiman called Stardust.  Its your typical fantasy book set in the world of Faerie: the boy gets the girl, a lost lineage is restored, simple people have nobility awakened within them.  It was thoroughly enjoyable even if it wasn't otherwise remarkable.  One particular thing that struck me, however, was the interaction of two of the main characters: the villian and the slave.

Without giving away too much of the story, there was a situation where a witch had held a woman in servitude for 30 years.  Her slavery ended when the hero arranged matters so that the conditions of breaking the spell that bound her were satisfied.  "These things have their own rules...", she said. 

That's the part that struck me.  In faerie stories, evil has rules that it must follow.  Their are limits imposed upon it by a power that is necessarily greater and better.  In the real world, it seems like evil has free reign.  We've just finished a century that arguably saw more war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide than any other time in history.  Evil is everywhere.  Even those who count themselves as the 'good', if they are honest, recognize that it is only the hairsbreadth of lawful government and privledge that seperate us from complicity with the atrocities we observe from afar.  There doesn't seem to be any limitations or rules that the roving militia needs to follow.  There's no deep magic that seems to govern the random ghoul of cancer. 

And yet, there is a wall.  There is a boundary that say's "this far and no farther".  Evil must play by the rules God sets in place for it.  It has no choice, though it would rage against it.  We are proctected and kept in the promise that some day all will finally be well...that "after my body has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.  That's why faerie stories resonate so strongly.  We know that his is the way the world should be, and the way it really is, though we can't see it yet.  The hero has arranged an end to our slavery, and all the years stolen from us will be restored, all the relationships torn from us will be reunited in joy, and our sometimes lonely walk through life will end with a homecoming to a house full of companions and one loving Father at last.