Green

The green square centres on the realm of the human heart -- not in the romantic sense, but in terms of sinfulness, disease, hunger, hatred, vengeance, law, mercy, forgiveness, love. The essence of a green square plot is always relational -- if there are few characters, then loneliness and isolation may become significant features of the story.

Most modern war movies, the majority of westerns, many Victorian psychological novels, and nearly all Film Noir takes place on the Green square.

The right hand heroes on this square are concerned, primarily, with the care and salvation of others. They may have a flock that they are specifically responsible for (Schindler with his flock of Jewish prisoners), they may intercede for the sake of a specific group (Esmeralda pleading the cause of the gypsies), or they might seek the salvation of a single individual (Colonel Trautman calling Rambo peacefully home.) They are often to be found attending to the sick and dying, suffering with those who are commended to them, offering support and courage to flagging spirits, standing steadfastly alongside those whom they love.

The left-hand heroes are a different ball of wax entirely. They are, in some ways, the darkest of heroic types, and the most likely to appear to behave like villains. The Avenger and the Adulteress are often out-casts from society, people who have lost everything and been denied all human comforts for the sake of their sins. They may, like Anna Karenina, lose their family and children; they may be hunted by the law and despised by men, like Joe Money in Unforgiven. At the lighter end of the spectrum, they are men like Jean Valjean who have been unjustly persecuted for minor infractions, and whose deep and heart-felt contrition is truly inspiring because they have so much less to atone for than most of us, and have already been made to suffer far more for their trifling sins than we have for shaking our fists in the face of God. On the darker end, you find someone like Raskolnikov, who has committed an unjust murder, and who is redeemed by embracing his guilt and expiating it through suffering. For both left hand heroes, the price of redemption is confession: when their stories end well, it is because they accept and apologize for their guilt, and thus unite their darkest deeds into the "happy sin of Adam" which won us Christ's redemption.

The right-hand villains, in contradistinction to the left-hand heroes, are likely to believe that they are heroic and justified, when they are evil in fact. These are the white-washed sepulchres, the phariseeical and the self-righteous, the good wife and the upright man in their worst possible incarnation. Like the police-chief in First Blood, Javert in Les Miserables, and Prude in the biblical story, these are people who appear to be respectable, who have the support and force of the law behind them, who are unimpeachable in the eyes of society. They are fanatically devoted to their duties, to their families, their husbands, their own kind -- but this devotion creates in them a blindness to their own faults, and to the goodness of those who are not like them. World War II movies find themselves so often on the Green square because the Nazi officer, perfectly obedient, ruthless in applying the law, and celebrated amongst his own kind, is a perfect type of The Law. Their villainy, ultimately, rests in the fact that they are incapable of mercy, and that they cannot recognize the face of God in the poor, the unfortunate, the down-trodden and the outsider.

The left-hand villains on this square are the most forgivable and comprehensible of villains, and often the most sympathetic. Theirs are the vices that most of us are prone to succumb to -- we may find it impossible to understand why someone would want to consume human livers, or murder their brother for a pailful of berries and some red slippers, but we are all capable of understanding why someone might do evil for fear of the consequences of doing good. The Coward and the Whore are essentially in the same boat as the the Adulteress and the Avenger: they must all choose between worldly comfort and moral goodness; security and justice. The Coward doesn't, strictly speaking, do anything, and he doesn't want to be associated with evil: he is the classic Pontius Pilate, who makes a good show of pleading for Christ's release, but then washes his hands of the whole affair when it becomes clear that he will not be able to do what is right without sacrificing the respect of the world. The Whore says of her sins, "I was born in poverty, I was deprived of all that others have been given, I have been made to suffer -- therefore my transgressions are the fault of someone else. How could I have been other than what I am?" Carmen is a classic example, dancing from one petty piece of villainy to another, leaving behind her a wake of broken hearts and shattered lives for which she accepts no responsibility, but which ultimately lead to her destruction.

In the end, the characters of a Green Square plot are made or broken on the strength of their humility, their ability to offer and accept mercy, their commitment or failure to do what is just. Their stories sound out the reaches of the human heart, and map the face of self-sacrificing love.

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