An article in Writer’s Digest suggests that Americans now question long held beliefs: “American verities (e.g., equal opportunity, fairness, decency) have worn thin, revealing the naked aggression, vanity and greed underneath.” (David Corbett, “No More Mr. Nice Guy, September 2018)

Thus, we have novels with no heroes or heroines, like the characters in Gone Girl, or the unreliable narrator, behaving in disgusting ways, as in The Woman on the Train.

Then, in a surprisingly delightful book, A Man Called Ove, we are driven to sympathize with a man who, at first, is presented as someone obsessed with order, who doesn’t like animals or children. He even resents being asked to help a neighbor struggling to care for a husband suffering dementia. Then we are shown his prior griefs, and we sympathize.

Writers today do use more offensive characters. Yet, Corbett advises writers: “When using struggle and desire to create empathy for an otherwise offensive character, don’t neglect to explore just what risks the character faces.”

In other words, we can sympathize with someone pretty badly messed up if we understand their struggles.

For those of us who believe that evil can and should be redeemed, such characters can give us hope in a world turned overnight into Dante’s inferno.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, as he struggled to overcome the evil of apartheid in South Africa, “I am a prisoner of hope.”

Novels like Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Patton, with its imperfect characters, perhaps helped move the country out of apartheid.

For Americans, divided and anger-stricken, fiction and non-fiction can mirror the dysfunction while at least hinting that we still have choices.