Legal and moral choices in a work of fiction

[Yarb]

Doubtless some here will recognize this passage from a novel:

The library book had been burning a hole in his rucksack; at Oklahoma City he noticed a postal box at the freight depot and, on impulse, dropped the book into it. After he had mailed it he had a twinge of worry that he might have given a clue to his whereabouts which would get back to Montgomery, but he suppressed the worry—the book had to be returned. Vagrancy in the eyes of the law had not worried him, nor trespass, nor impersonating a licensed teamster—but filching a book was a sin.

Moral issues in this story get very heavily mixed up with legal issues, but with no lawyers or court proceedings except some that are mentioned in passing. Just why this has become a favorite paragraph of mine I leave to my psychiatrist (but I don’t have a psychiatrist and if I ever consult one I doubt this will be among the concerns). But the way in which legalities interact with morality and purposefulness ends up being just about what the whole story is about.

The story is Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein. Much of Heinlein’s fiction for adults is garbage, but most of his work for the teenaged male audience (such as this story) is good and some of that is brilliant. You might think moral conflicts are at the heart of all works of fiction. And lawyers and judges and laws are central to Heinlein’s space-aliens-versus-lawyers story titled The Star Beast. But in a way that I haven’t seen in other novels, perhaps including those of Scott Turow, all of which are about lawyers and judges, much of this story is driven by particular moral concerns and legal problems that hang over the protagonist’s head. And the fact that some laws have wise and important reasons for existing and others are motivated only by dishonesty and injustice and power-lust. The diversity of kinds of laws interacting with everyday moral choices and not-so-everyday ones shows up more frequently in this story than any other I’ve read, and yet never seems to intrude or even be very conspicuous in some ways. In Chapter 16 a leader’s pronouncements about the importance of laws in an emergency situation is a sort of foreshadowing of the climax in Chapter 20, yet doesn’t hint at the surprising events.

The climax of the story in Chapter 20 was an utter shock and I have a tentative theory that legal case histories that Heinlein had studied, perhaps when he was a student at the Naval Academy in the '20s, inspired it and hence the whole novel. (Please don’t give away the surprise here.)

Is there a Catholic viewpoint that can contribute something here that others might not?

 

[Viki63]

Is there a Catholic viewpoint? Maybe, since the church talks often about the law and morality. Clearly there is often a conflict between laws and ethics, and that’s grist for many works of fiction.

It’s been years since I read Heinlein, and he was never my favorite author, maybe because I was never a teenage boy. I didn’t like Podkayne of Mars, as I recall his portrayal of a teenage girl was a little off. I liked The Door into Summer and loved The Puppet Masters.

 

[Yarb]

Is there a Catholic viewpoint? Maybe, since the church talks often about the law and morality.

I suppose I meant a Catholic analysis rather than merely a position on what’s right and wrong. That some laws are unjust and irrational plays a prominent role in this story, and the importance of having laws and the fact that some have wise reasons for existing also plays a major role.