The Storyteller

Good and evil are often thought of as distinct qualities with no overlap. Sorting people into these two simple categories provides a sense of comfort—if a person knows who is good and who is bad they may feel better able to avoid those who would harm them. The Storyteller emphasizes that this kind of thinking is reductive and ignores the complexity of human nature; most people are capable of being both good and evil. Josef is the clearest example of this duality. When Sage first meets him, he appears to be a good and simple person, a kindly widower beloved by his community. After he tells her that he is Reiner Hartmann, this image is inverted; Sage now sees him as a cruel war criminal who killed with no qualms. It’s hard for her to accept that both sides of Josef can be true, and she feels the need to categorize him as either a villain or a hero to fit her preexisting moral schema.

A question which reoccurs throughout the narrative is whether immoral people can do good things and vice-versa. Josef believes that they can. He says that “inside of each of us is a monster [and] a saint” (110), asserting that every individual has the capability to be good or bad each time they make a new choice.