Thinking about Good vs Evil

The genre of fantasy always deals with themes of good verses evil.

How do you know if the characters are good or evil?

Theo: Definitely the person telling the story is good... well at least according to them.

Andrea: Have you ever read a story that is written from the point of view of the evil person?

Sophia: The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. The wolf tells the story.

Livie: He is just trying to act all innocent to get out of jail.

Sophia: Yeah, but in his mind he was good.

Livie: It is kind of like in WWII, no one thought that they were the bad guys.

Sophia: It is kind of like they were both good [thoughtful pause] or both bad.

Andrea: Do you think that is true with most villains? Do you think they think they are good or do you think some villains know they are bad?

Theo: Some know they are bad. Voldemort. The emperor in Star Wars know he is bad. Well actually I don't know if the emperor knows. Kronos knows! Well Lucas knows Kronos is evil but Kronos doesn't know that Kronos is evil.

The children dive into a detailed discussion about the plot in the Percy Jackson series.

Sophia: He is good then bad and then good again.

Livie: In WWII, lets say Germany writes a history book, they make us sound like the bad guys but when we write a history book we make it sound like they are the bad guys. So particularly they are being bad guys to each other. There is no real bad guy. Except in fantasy and in fiction you will find that the bad guys know they are bad guys. In non-fiction people don't always know. They always think that you are the bad guy.

Andrea: It sounds like in real life it might be more complicated than they make it out to be in fantasy books.

Theo: To know if they are the bad guy you need to know if they do something evil. So watch their actions. Like Voldemort always kills innocent people.

Livie: But I am wondering, how did he become this evil man?