The reality of evil

Susan Hill has been talking about the reality of evil in a Guardian interview:

'Hill, who is a Christian, does believe in wickedness. In an afterword to her classic 1970 bullying novel, I'm the King of the Castle, widely taught in secondary schools, she spelled out that she believed her 11-year-old villain, Hooper, was "evil". Asked about this now, she says: "How do you look at a tiny baby and say it is potentially evil, yet look at the boys who killed James Bulger, what was that? That was evil. It's a knotty problem but I think there are some people, not many, who have … the devil in them."'

This is a theme Hill has pondered previously, as in this quote from an interview in the Telegraph:

'Hill sits forward, hands between her knees, thoughtful: "Why do the innocent suffer? There are these two sides in life, always: the innocent do suffer and there is evil." Evil's presence, she thinks, comes from love's absence. She cites two friends, a forensic psychiatrist and a judge: "They both say they have never really known any serious murderer or psychopath for whom the key isn't somewhere in an unloved childhood."'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lou Reed - Waves Of Fear.