 Drama: September 21, 2016 Issue [#7853] |
  Drama
This week: Betrayal As the Dramatic Element Edited by: Joy  
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“You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself.”
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“I could never hurt him enough to make his betrayal stop hurting. And it hurts, in every part of my body.”
Veronica Roth, Insurgent
"You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius!"
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
“Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her?Never mind physically but betray her in his mind,in the very "poetry of his soul".Well,it's not easy but men do it all the time.”
Mario Puzo, Fools Die
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about betrayal as the dramatic element in our fiction.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Betrayal is a part of the human condition and is usually shown as the weakness of a character. There are many instances of betrayal in stories and novels.
Of those, a good example is The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. This story’s source is a personal experience of the author, although the novel itself is totally fictional, presenting a sad story of a beautiful love plagued by jealousy and guilt.
Another example can be The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, which was also cast as an NPR story on TV. The betrayal here is a hidden one, hidden in the beliefs of restraint, dignity, and loyalty of a butler, which betrayed him, although they had sustained him once.
I believe Shakespeare put the entire idea of betrayal in a nutshell in Julius Caesar with this exclamation of surprise: “Et tu, Brute?” In fact, when one analyzes Shakespeare’s plays, one can always find betrayal in one form or another. This is because betrayal is a fact of life and most anyone will suffer at least one betrayal in their lifetime.
As far as fiction writing goes, betrayal can be used as the primary conflict in stories or it can serve as a side issue in a subplot because adding it to a story shakes up the characters making it become a strong catalyst with shock value to extricate external and internal action, such as retribution. In addition, as an emotional type of a conflict, it may be able to create long-lasting problems for all the characters involved.
Betrayal is inevitable in life, and thus, in fiction. Let alone a lover, a friend, a parent, or a child who may stab the person in the back, a business, any company, the government, or even the medical practitioner one trusts may end up mistreating or bilking him or her for money under false premises. The financial type of betrayal of trust can be dealt with and healed in time, but when the heart is injured, the wound lasts a lifetime or, at least, for a very long while.
The opposite of betrayal is trust, which is something we give or earn. It is also something we nurture and let grow. Trust exists within a person, just like love, and most of the time, it is reciprocal. You cannot betray a person who cannot be betrayed, which means the betrayer wasn’t trusted in the first place. Blame, jealousy, shame, disrespect, and the withholding of affection damage the roots of trust and can be construed as some kind of a betrayal.
Since betrayal can lead to irrational behavior in everyone, to avoid and lessen its aftereffects the most important thing to do is hearing what isn’t being said, but finding the intention hiding under the words or actions. Another way is to control one’s mind to not be affected by the actions of others. Both are very difficult to do and have other unhealthy consequences.
I can think of a few scenes and scenarios where the idea of betrayal can be shown. For the sake of brevity, let’s call the betrayer Betrayer A and the betrayed party Character B.
 Character B makes it clear to the Betrayer A that the mistake was B’s fault for trusting A. This could surprise A and even make her/him feel guilty especially if he/she had a modicum of conscience. Or else, the betrayer may feel anger and increase his or her aggression.
Character B says to A, “I’ll never forgive you, although you are/were my friend. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” In this instance, A is surprised again for he/she expected some leniency if not forgiveness.
Character B makes it clear that he/she never trusted Betrayer A in the first place, making A wonder why B went along with it if he/she never trusted Betrayer A. Did B have an ulterior motive like a frame-up that A didn’t catch on before?
Betrayer A finds out that Character B, although he or she was betrayed, didn’t mind A’s actions or the betrayal itself, as in B’s mind and culture, betrayal was considered acceptable. (Think of the Mafia or the Godfather movies in which the betrayal was thought of as “business.”)
Betrayer A is surprised at Character B’s actions when B betrays A in a worse way in return.
There’s no Betrayer A in the story. Character B, knowingly or unknowingly, betrays herself/himself with wrong actions and is surprised at herself or himself for doing that, as in the case of Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.
With betrayal, what can heal or bring closure to a fictional character's experience may be extracted from Bryant McGill’s Simple Reminders: “We are all recovering from some mistake, loss, betrayal, abuse, injustice or misfortune. All of life is a process of recovery that never ends. We each must find ways to accept and move through the pain and to pick ourselves back up.”
And may your characters do just that...
Until next time! 
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This Issue's Tip: Every rising conflict needs to be foreshadowed first in some way or it will end up being a shocker without any depth.
Your article is excellent. It is a much better piece than the ones I come across in most psychology journals. Congrats again for writing it.
