Rather than rummage through the exquisite and persuasive language of religions — all of which implore believers to rank goodness as the highest and holiest of human achievement, and many of which identify their saints and icons of worship as examples of pure altruism — I decided to focus on the role goodness plays in literature using my own line of work — fiction — as a test.

In 19th-century novels, regardless of what acts of wickedness or cruel indifference controlled the plot, the ending was almost always the triumph of goodness. Dickens, Hardy, and Austen all left their readers with a sense of the restoration of order and the triumph of virtue, even Dostoyevsky. Note that Svidrigailov in “Crime and Punishment,” exhausted by his own evil and the language that supports it, becomes so bored by his terminal acts of charity, he commits suicide. He cannot live without the language of evil, nor within the silence of good deeds. There are famous exceptions to what could be called a 19th-century formula invested in identifying clearly who or what is good. Obviously “Don Quixote” and “Candide” both mock the search for pure goodness. Other exceptions to that formula remain puzzles in literary criticism: Melville’s “Billy Budd” and “Moby-Dick,” both of which support multiple interpretations regarding the rank, the power, the meaning that goodness is given in these texts. The consequence of Billy Budd’s innocence is execution. Is Ishmael good? Is Ahab a template for goodness, fighting evil to the death? Or is he a wounded, vengeful force outfoxed by indifferent nature, which is neither good nor bad? Innocence represented by Pip we know is soon abandoned, swallowed by the sea without a murmur. Generally, however, in 19th-century literature, whatever the forces of malice the protagonist is faced with, redemption and the triumph of virtue was his or her reward.

Twentieth-century novelists were unimpressed. The movement away from happy endings or the enshrining of good over evil was rapid and stark after World War I. That catastrophe was too wide, too deep to ignore or to distort with a simplistic gesture of goodness. Many early modern novelists, especially Americans, concentrated on the irredeemable consequences of war — the harm it did to its warriors, to society, to human sensibility. In those texts, acts of sheer goodness, if not outright comical, are treated with irony at best or ladled with suspicion and fruitlessness at worst. One thinks of Faulkner’s “A Fable” and the mixed reviews it received, most of which were disdainful of the deliberate armistice between soldiers in trench warfare against each other driven by a Christ-like character. The term “hero” seems to be limited these days to the sacrificing dead: first responders running into fiery buildings, mates throwing themselves on grenades to save the lives of others, rescuing the drowning, the wounded. Faulkner’s character would never be seen or praised as a hero.

Evil grabs the intellectual platform and its energy; it demands careful examinations of its consequences, its techniques, its motives, its successes however short-lived or temporary. Grief, melancholy, missed chances for personal happiness often seem to be contemporary literature’s concept of evil. It hogs the stage. Goodness sits in the audience and watches, assuming it even has a ticket to the show. A most compelling example of this obsession with evil is Umberto Eco’s “The Prague Cemetery.” Brilliant as it is, never have I read a more deeply disturbing fascination with the nature of evil; disturbing precisely because it is treated as a thrilling intelligence scornful of the monotony and stupidity of good intentions.

Contemporary literature is not interested in goodness on a large or even limited scale. When it appears, it is with a note of apology in its hand and has trouble speaking its name. For every “To Kill a Mockingbird,” there is a Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood” or “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” striking goodness down with a well-honed literary ax. Many of the late 20th-, early 21st-century heavyweights — Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow and so on — are masters at exposing the frailty, the pointlessness, the comedy of goodness.

I thought it would be interesting and possibly informative to examine my thesis on the life and death of goodness in literature using my own work. I wanted to measure and clarify my understanding by employing the definitions of altruism that I gleaned from my tentative research. To this end, I selected three:

1. Goodness taught and learned (a habit of helping strangers and/or taking risks for them).

2. Goodness as a form of narcissism, ego enhancement or even a mental disorder.

3. Goodness as instinct, as a result of genetics (protecting one’s kin or one’s group).

An example of the first: A learned habit of goodness can be found in “A Mercy.” There a priest, at some danger to himself, teaches female slaves to read and write. Lest this be understood as simple kindness, here is a sample of punishments levied on white people who risked promoting literacy among black people: “Any white person assembling with slaves or free Negroes for purpose of instructing them to read or write, or associating with them in any unlawful assembly, shall be confined in jail not exceeding six months and fined not exceeding $100.00.” That text appeared in Virginia’s criminal law as late as 1848.