What do characters desire? What are their aspirations?

What is their telos?

Telos is a Greek word that Aristotle liked. It refers to an ultimate goal: a moral vision of some future state that lends coherence to one’s desires and commitments. It is the purpose for which we exist and the end we are seeking.

A telos embraces an intended conception of happiness. According to Aristotle, humans are seeking happiness, which is a telos that we desire for its own sake and not as means to some other good, such as honor or pleasure or wealth. It is for the sake of this that we do everything else. For Aristotle, morality is closely related to wisdom. Through wisdom, we understand what character traits (virtues) we need to practice and what choices we need to make if we are to move toward happiness.

We need to develop wisdom because we want lots of things, but not all of them help us toward our telos. Socrates described three sources of motivation:

appetite: the pursuit of pleasure
spirit: the pursuit of love and achievement, the craving for friendship and belonging, the impulse to play and win (ambition)
reason: the pursuit of understanding and wisdom, the desire to discover and to learn

One key to reaching our telos is to govern our spirit and our appetite with our reason.

Learning from stories

Much of great literature--stories that have continued to interest many readers over a long period of time--have remained interesting because they are stories about the schooling of desire. They explore how characters learned to better fulfill their telos or how they failed to do so (readers have learned from both the stories of success and of failure).

The reason people find stories so helpful in figuring out how to live their lives is because people are stories. The only way to know someone is to know their story. The only way to become the person we want to be is to make choices as events unfold.

Most of us are engaged in a lifelong project to bring our own telos into sharper focus and then to make better choices so we can become the sort of person we want to be. All of us have our moral agency schooled by our circumstances, relationships, attitudes, choices, and commitments. All cultures use stories to help people teach themselves what to make of their lives and how to go about it.

Mapping a character’s moral trajectory

One way of getting to the heart of what a story is about is to focus on morally pivotal points: moments that lead characters to pursue a more fruitful direction for their lives as a whole. Characters may see the value of using their talents more constructively; they may commit to a noble purpose.

Morally pivotal points are moments or events that lead characters to reassess their goals or the paths they are following to get to their goals. They are moments when characters face decisions about the goal they are seeking or the path they are on. At each pivotal point, the character gets a new or a refined vision of their telos, which gives him or her a new direction. These are moments that signal a reconsideration or a sharpening of their goals or aspirations.

How are such morally pivotal points brought about? What factors gradually prepare a person for such a change?

Four factors are often involved. Taken together, these factors serve as a catalyst for moral growth, leading characters to cultivate virtue (character strengths) and move closer to what Aristotle called “the best possible state of soul.” When these factors are absent, characters often experience moral decline.

1. relationships
2. learning from pain and acquiring new pleasures
3. thoughtful reflection
4. courage to face the truth (about reality, oneself, and others)

How do these four factors work to bring about moral growth in the fictional character? Or how do their absence contribute to moral decline?

Following a character’s moral trajectory is using their experience as a road map: we follow the terrain they cross, the course they set, the paths they take and, most important, the destination they reach. Our goal is to learn from both their mistakes and their successes and to judge both their merits and their limitations.

Mapping Pivotal Points worksheet