Redemption Prose

At dinner the other night with friends, we were discussing books we had recently read. One friend mentioned a a fairly recent novel, The Kite-Runner. He made the book sound interesing, and the next day I was in a bookstore when I passed an audio copy of the book. I picked it up, and read the 100 word blurb on the back of the book. But what I read in the blurb made me put the book down and walk as fast as I could away. In those 100 words, the word "redemption" was used twice.

Since The Kite-Runner is a serious book, I suspect the word "redemption" was used more for marketing purposes than as a description of the thematic scope of the novel. But what is it about pop culture today that makes "redemption" such a prevalent theme? People write novels about characters that do terrible things, only to realize the error of their ways, and they become "redeemed". (Or they write their memiors.) Oprah stretchs one redemption into an hour long show, but I guess if your time is limited, you can squeeze your 15 minutes of redemption into a segment of Good Morning America (as Mel Gibson is soon scheduled to do). And Mark Foley and his handlers are already planning their redemption strategy.

I stay away from "redemptive" stories as much as I can because they are all the same fucking story. How many times can someone be entertained by the same basic story? Would you buy a magazine over and over if the contents never changed?

I am aware that there are only so many basic plots and story ideas, and that genre fiction is nothing new, but redemption stories are the most repetitive of all. At least humourous stories/movies use different jokes. At least crime dramas/detective stories feature different crimes, and the best can generate suspense as you try to figure out who did what and if they will get away with it.

But a redemption story will always end the same way. The character will be redeemed. Big surprise. Why do you have to watch a movie or buy a book to figure that out? Would there be any market for a book that was about redemption, except there is a big swerve at the end, and the main character decides to continue to be a scumbag? No, that would indicate creativity, which is something these stories tend to lack.

The only thing that would seem to change is the level and type of depravity a character goes through before he or she is "redeemed". If people read these books to get off on the depravity rather than the redemption, they would be similar to people that criticize violent content in popular entertainment, but always read those murder mysteries. Over and over and over again.