concertigrossi

One further thought: part of the problem is that literature has a bias toward reflective characters, because it's easier to depict their inner lives if they have some kind of self-awareness. And it's precisely that *lack* of reflection that makes the kind of banal evil Arendt was talking about possible. I don't remember the book very well at all, but from my dim recollection, Eichmann was able to do what he did because he didn't really *think*, he just sort of...behaved and reacted. And the unexamined life is not only much more likely to be evil, but also really hard to write about, except from the position of an observer.