It is so clichéd to observe that people are not black and white. We all say it - yet we don’t get it. Not really. Encouraged by the media, we tend to think of people as good and bad, as heroes or villains.
But it’s something to try and avoid when we write.
Take Luis Suarez, for example.
What has Luis Suarez got to do with good writing?
Everything.
For those of you who don’t follow the World Cup, Luis Suarez is an immensely talented soccer player. He has also bitten more people than Hannibal Lecter.
Since 2010 he has taken chunks out of 3 opponents, and racially vilified another.
He is also widely denigrated as a cheat who will use any dirty trick to gain an advantage on the soccer field. He’s a cross between Bob Sugar and a junkyard dog.
He’s also a loving and devoted family man.
Let me tell you his story.
Luis grew up in a broken family on the wrong side of the tracks in Montevideo, Uruguay. Luckily, he had talent to burn as a soccer player. But by the time he was 15 his coaches thought he was lazy and off field he had a drinking problem. He scraped by working as a street sweeper.
Then he met Sofia. Sofia was blonde, beautiful and middle class. She saw things in Luis that Luis couldn’t see. Her family took him under their wing and made him feel he actually belonged somewhere. He stopped drinking. He got a taste of what life might be like away from the barrio.
And then her family left Uruguay and went to live in Spain.
Luis was devastated. He started up his drinking again. For a while it was all downhill.
And then he got the insane notion that he might see Sophia again if he became a good enough soccer player.
Some rich European soccer club might be his passport out of the slums and back into the arms of the love of his life.
So he stopped being a lazy soccer player and became instead the kind of kid who would do anything to win.
And here’s the thing: he did it.
A small Dutch club, Groningen, scouted him and brought him to Holland to play for them. He caught the eye of Ajax, and then Liverpool, two of the biggest clubs in Europe. He became a superstar. Luis married Sofia in 2009, and they have two children that he absolutely dotes on.
He wore a t-shirt with his family’s picture screen printed on it to one game, underneath his club shirt. When his son was born he carried him out onto the pitch before the next match, to show him off to his adoring fans.
It should have been a fairytale but for one thing; the handsome prince was also the wicked witch. This cream puff of a family man bit chunks out of opposing defenders if they got in his way. Can you see why?
To some people Suarez is still a hero; to others he’s almost cartoonish in his villainy.
More likely he is just Everyman writ large; he is both Indiana Jones and Count Dracula, depending on which side of the white line he is standing.
He’s a human being, his complexities magnified by the TV screen, all the terrifying internal conflicts and morbid fears laid bare on prime time.
If you’re a fellow human being, don’t rush to defend him; but don’t judge him either. If you’ve ever been pilloried, you’ll know what I mean.
But if you’re a writer - watch it all play out … and be sure to take plenty of notes ….
And while we’re on the subject of people battling their dark side …
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