The best books on the power of conscience

The novelist Ernest Hemingway famously said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…. There has been nothing as good since.” This was the novel that convinced me that a “children’s book” can also be an adult book. Jim is a runaway slave. He’s also Huck’s best friend. The law says that Huck shouldn’t help Jim escape. But there is a law written in Huck’s heart that tells him he must help him. What happens when the two laws—the written-down law and the law of the heart—conflict? That’s what Huck has to figure out. He’s thirteen years old. But in deciding between what’s legal and what’s moral, Huck becomes the conscience of a nation.

Pip, the narrator of Great Expectations, is one of the great conscience-torn protagonists in literature. He ages in the novel from a (roughly) seven-year-old boy to a young man, and he matures in the course of events from valuing the shiniest objects and people in his orbit to appreciating honesty, generosity, and love—even when they are found in the least outwardly attractive characters. What I like best about the book is that when Pip does eventually center his moral compass, when he tries to do the right thing, he does not arrive at a happily-ever-after. Doing the right thing is a reward in itself. 

The Catcher in the Rye is a tough call. It’s a great book, but not always a likable one. The teenagers who populate it are deeply flawed, none more so than the narrator, Holden Caufield. Holden is suffering from depression, anxiety, and plain old boredom. He wants to save someone…anyone. Except he’s a pain in the butt to everyone around him. But that voice! Is there a more arresting opening to any novel? “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

I didn’t even know a novel called Paper Moon existed until I saw the movie; the fact that the book’s title was changed retroactively underscores how much the 1973 film starring Tatum and Ryan O’Neal has overshadowed it. Set in the American south during the Great Depression, the plot follows the misadventures of nine-year-old orphan Addie Pray and a con-man nicknamed Long Boy—who may or may not be Addie’s biological father. Her desire to connect with Long Boy means getting drawn into his petty swindles and confidence schemes, helping him cheat people at a time when many of them are hard up for money. Addie knows what she’s doing is wrong. She’s guilt-ridden about it. But Long Boy is family. Maybe.

I’m not even sure what to call The Screwtape Letters. It’s fantasy, but it’s not exactly fiction. It’s philosophy, but there’s no rigorous analysis—in fact, you can’t trust a word out of the narrator’s mouth. But is Screwtape really a narrator? He’s telling a story, sort of, but he’s telling our story, humanity’s story, and therefore the reader’s story, not his own. He’s a demon; that much we know. He’s advising his demon nephew Wormwood on the best ways to ruin a human soul. His project is our mortal peril. Screwtape is one of the greatest characters in twentieth-century literature: funny, petty, prickly, annoying, and wise almost beyond words. He’s irresistible. That’s the problem.