What really is meant by "grey morality"?

I'm a writer and I'm trying to get what exactly is meant by grey morality. I understand "morality isn't just black and white" but I fail to see real world examples that make sense. Isn't compromising good evil? Don't many people profess a "greater good" when they do evil in the real world? So everyone who is evil by default is morally "grey" if alongside their evil they do a little bit of good, and Pet the Dog once in a while? There seems to be this obsession with moral "grey" in fiction. But it seems to come down to some people doing evil (black) in order to achieve a good (white) goal, or it's just Good is Not Nice. But if you morally compromise to achieve a good end doesn't it still remain an evil action? It kind of seems like they just want to untie characters' hands so they can do atrocities, fight wars, even kill civilians, and break the law while still claiming to be the "good guys", and usually this is because of some unlikely coincidence that allows their actions to turn out to have been good, when in real life these things are just wrong.

Good would be characters who do things the work considers morally right, for good reason, with good methods.

Evil is characters who do morally bad things, for selfish or cruel reason, using bad methods to win.

Gray, as I understand it, is everything in between, based on the standards of the work. They may have the right moral actions but have bad motivation and methods (or vice versa), good motivation and bad otherwise (or vice versa) or good methods, but bad otherwise (or vice versa). Gray implies a very flawed but redeemable character who most wouldn't consider "good" or "bad".

Of course, the writing may make such characters shallow, but...

Characters who are "morally grey" are often an Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain. Anything less than an Ideal Hero is "grey", until you get to a Card-Carrying Villain or Complete Monster, which is "black". Most stories have "grey" characters rather than Black-and-White Morality.

That seems like way too broad a definition. I see Gray-and-Grey Morality as occurring only when there is a question of who the audience should root for.

Take this hypothetical: A story centers on the conflict between put-upon office worker Tom and his tyrannical manager Phil (details of the conflict don’t matter, save that they are Phil's fault. Tom is not an Ideal Hero, just a beleaguered office drone, and Phil is not a Card-Carrying Villain, just a petty asshole. But, if there is never doubt that Tom is right and the audience should root for him, then it is not Grey and Gray.

Maybe so, though that doesn't mean neither Tom nor his boss can still be gray characters, just that it isn't an ambiguous situation like Gray v Gray is.

I wasn't defining Grey-and-Gray Morality. That's a specific type of conflict. The Original Poster asked about characters failing to be an Ideal Hero, and if compromising makes them morally deprived. Morally imperfect characters show up in more than just Grey-and-Gray Morality conflicts.

To suggest that morality is black and white in Real Life reflects a much too simplistic view of the world. Very few people are purely good or purely evil, absolutely unselfish or absolutely selfish. The most vilified lawbreakers may have families that they love and justifications for their actions, and the most sainted benefactors may have made ugly compromises in order to help the greatest number of people. Even the definition of what is moral may vary across cultures and time periods.

Stories with Black-and-White Morality reflect a more simplistic viewpoint, which is fine. Sometimes we enjoy uncomplicated good vs. evil. More complex stories might ask questions like: "Are the heroes doing the right things? Are they good people?" and "Do the villains have reasons for their actions? Should we be sympathetic to them?" Even a straightforward heroic narrative can give the protagonists flaws and the antagonists sympathetic motives.

All this can happen well before we go into full Grey-and-Gray Morality, wherein the audience is expected to find something in both sides to root for (or dislike). You can have variations of it as well:

• White and Gray Morality, where protagonists are unambiguously heroic but antagonists are complex and not necessarily straight-up villains.
• Gray-and-Black Morality, where antagonists are unambiguously evil but protagonists (hard to say "heroes" in this context) are flawed and might be villains in a different kind of work.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2019 at 11:06:08 AM

So how would we classify a story in which the heroes have some flaws and the villains some positive qualities but it is still a "straightforward heroic narrative" in which there is never a question of who we should ultimately root for? Would it just be none of them (which is fine)?

That's still Black-and-White Morality, generally speaking, although you don't have to list any of those tropes if they don't fit.