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Abstract

This paper explores how individuals in Jodi Picoult’s novel The Storyteller (2013) make moral choices and become perpetrators of mass killing when subjected to certain social, psychological, and cultural circumstances.The novel presents moral conundrums through detailed accounts narrated from the perspectives of a Holocaust survivor, a perpetrator, an investigator, and a descendant of a survivor. The presence of detailed accounts, notably of a perpetrator in the novel, can lead to a cascade of ideas about morality, compelling readers into a state of moral ambivalence. This paper uses James Waller’s model (2007), which is grounded in evolutioary psychology, to understand the evils that unfold in the novel, and uncover the underlying psychological circumstances that characters of Josef and Franz were subjected to while growing up in Nazi Germany. This paper emphasises the necessity of understanding evil by examining its nature, as this novel ultimately aims to achieve this through its multiple-perspective narrative. This paper enlightens the readers about the factors that contribute to the transformation of ordinary people into extraordinary evils. This awareness can be a bulwark against the states that can employ to get people to commit unjust actions.