Morality and Amorality: The Wire vs Game of Thrones

Pawns:  Poot, Bodie, DeAngelo, Wallace

The Most Interesting Man in the Kingdoms

What makes a work of fiction "dark?" 

What makes it tower?

Clearly, darkness can emerge from a willingness to create a character with whom the viewer/reader develops a relationship, a liking, and then destroying that character.  This violates a standard expectation in story telling:  If you have an author who has spent the time and energy to create a really interesting, likable or admirable character, one does not expect that author to kill off that character at a fairly early point in the plot. The reader is likely to simply hurl the book across the room or to change channels. 

 On the other hand, the author who does this is usually careful to have created other characters the reader/viewer still cares about and this is a way of reaching a deeper sense of reality--this is the way the world is. You lose people you love. They die, but you persist. You are saddened, angered by the loss, but you have others, perhaps others you love less well, but others, with whom you must continue to travel on.

Both "Game of Thrones" and "The Wire" television series do this sort of sacrifice. It is very effective in establishing a sense of dread. You have been shown anyone can die at any moment, often when you least expect it. The graveyards are filled with indispensable men and women.

This sort of literature violates the notion of just deserts. There is no such thing as punishment for bad behavior in this sort of literature. The more ruthless you are, the more likely you are to prevail. It is sympathy, adherence to a code, "morality" which is likely to get you into trouble, because it makes you do things which are not in your own self interest.  Sir Douglas sees decency and goodness in a young man and he sets him free after his king has sentenced the young man to death. By the time this happens, you have seen several other characters who have believed in goodness, loyalty and kindness beheaded, throats slit or otherwise dispatched, so you  expect Sir Douglas to suffer for his goodness.

In "Game of Thrones"  the most nimble and cynical character, the Dwarf, tells his sister he does not want to rape the orphan with whom he is obligated to produce a child because "She does not deserve that."  His sister, whose own true love is her twin brother, a brother with whom she has had at least one child, replies, "Oh, you do not want to start down that road, the road of deserving or not deserving."  And we all know what she means--that is the road to destruction.

"Game of Thrones" is filled with people who enunciate strong moral codes--the most vicious and sinister Lancaster believes in family first--he is willing to murder the entire Stark family while they are guests at the Red Wedding and he is willing to order his son to rape and his daughter to marry a man she loathes in the name of family.  
Loyalty to family, perceived insults to family all lead to death and destruction in "Game of Thrones," and pronouncements of desire to avenge unjust killing drives many of the plots. The Lancasters are a sort of early Taliban, full of piety about family and realm, and ruthless in their execution of that sense of righteousness.

The people of "The Wire" waste little time or energy on ideals of right and wrong. Their morality is strictly practical: You do not betray your gang because that would place your people in direct and immediate danger and that would mean you will not last long,  yourself. The only good things in life are material:  bling, drugs, sex.  There is some talk of family by the Barksdales, but that is set aside when practical considerations arise. 

The only person in "The Wire" who talks about a "code" is the one character most outside all human groups, the isolated, unaligned man who lives alone, apart: Omar. Omar has a code.  And it is Omar who is the target of a shooting on Sunday morning, which violates a basic ghetto rule . The rule has been observed for practical reasons.  The players need to go to church because their families demand it, so Sunday morning has been set aside as a time when there shall be no shooting. Stringer Bell violates "Sunday morning" when it becomes impractical and inconvenient. Omar is indignant and vows to make Bell pay for this perfidy, violation of a practical standard of behavior.  

Of course, Omar's most trusted adviser, Butchie, tells him this vengeance  is impractical and Omar, briefly relents, but he is driven to avenge Butchie eventually, when Butchie becomes a target--again, the lone major actor in the entire series who is driven not by money, or drugs or sex or any of the practical worldly pleasures, but by a sense of outrage.

And in the end, Omar meets his fate not because he sought the uphold a sense of justice, but almost randomly.  He happens to turn his back on an eight year old who has a gun and who seeks glory. Ironically, it is an eight year old.  Bunk once appealed to Omar's conscience by describing how eight year olds emulated Omar's role in a street shoot out. Bunk shames Omar by describing eight year olds playing "bang, bang" in the streets after the shooting. "Oh, let me be Omar!"  And Omar is visibly disturbed to have become this new sort of street icon.  "Oh, how far we have fallen," Bunk says and it stings Omar, the one person in the series, white or black, with a conscience. There are only two characters over the series who show any real perspective about the meaning of their own lives: Omar, who is stung to think children want to follow in his footsteps,  and Wee Bay, who looks his wife in the eye and tells her they must set their son free from the drug culture and allow him  to seek a different life.  "You a soldier," his wife protests. "He can be a soldier. He can step up. Your name ring out." 
And Wee Bey, sitting on the other side of glass wall, in prison, shrugs and looks over his shoulder at the guard behind him, at the door back to his cell block and asks, "Yeah, and who would want that?"

What Wee Bey is saying, of course, is the only thing the pride of being a good soldier, a remorseless killer, has really ever led to is life in prison. "What's so great about my life, that I would want this for anyone else?" Wee Bey is saying.


For Omar, the world works as long as he can live alone, launch surprise attacks, take down his prey and then disappear. He lives in a jungle, and his morality is the morality of cheetah. Kill or be killed. He only gets into trouble when he develops a liking for somebody, like Butchie, or when he allows himself to be shamed.

"Conscience do cost," Butchie observes.

"Game of Thrones" is a work of rich imagination, riveting, thought provoking but essentially gratuitous. It's lessons are not rooted in this world. There are dragons, and kingdoms and thrones--all the things which fire the British imagination. From the Arthur legends to the Harry Potter books, when in doubt throw in some magician or a dragon or two. As is true of the most engaging British literature, like "Downton Abbey" there is wonderful dialogue, thrust and counter. It is a sort of glittering intelligence, fun and frothy.

  But in the end, it is "The Wire" which defends no code, which shows only amorality at work in the dystopia of a godless wasteland,  which teaches the most profound lessons. There are no dragons in the streets of Baltimore, no magic, no walking dead. There are only the truly dead, covered with lyme or blood or buried in the parks or tossed in the harbor.  Life in "The Wire" has only the value assigned it by politicians, newspapers, church people and fools.