Thoughts to ponder (major spoilers ahead)

Flower of Evil as its core is a deep suspenseful romance melodrama, but nevertheless, it main message lies within the themes of morality and ethics.

Disclaimer: I apologize early if I made mistakes on the following list (especially on the medical terms)

Some thoughts to ponder:

• Is the male lead a bad person? By what standards? 
• Are we free from sin?
• Is there a grey area in morality? While the drama was sure that Hyun Soo is an imperfect male lead, so other characters are, they were adamant that killing is bad by all means. This is also proven by Ji Won's unraveled principle up to the clash at episode 15, and maybe the reasons why Jung Mi Sook and his husband never reunited and why Hee Sung died. It was a big theme of the drama.
• Who are the real bad persons in the drama?
• Do you think you are clean?
• Are we doing enough for our relationships? Are we being grateful? Do Hyun Soo literally lived his life trying to be a good husband / father because he thought he was irredeemable. Are we more special than the Hyun Soo?
• Is the male lead a psychopath? Medically speaking, what is a psychopath?
• Is psychopath an overrated word? Are mentally-illed person specifically those who are called a psychopath and/or sociopath (people diagnosed with ASPD, the terms are almost used interchangeably) are automatically a bad person—worse, a term for a serial killer?
• Will you take a pill of not knowing something and live a lie?
• What / who do you consider home? For Hyun Soo is it his family.
• If the person did everything to put something horrible in hidden for years and showed you nothing but kindness, is that love?
  
  

ps: let's all ponder upon it. feel free to drop by and add more thoughts to ponder! 

I now only had a time to write a reply! Thank you @missreviews for your thoughts! On most points, I agree with everything that you've said. 

I was really fascinated by the messages that the writer tried to incorporate with this drama that's why I really loved it. I feel like this drama can also be perfect for discussion during ethics and philosophy classes. Haha. 

In philosophy, evil is defined as the absence of good. If that theory is to be followed, then, it's safe to say that all of us have sin. That absence no matter how big or short is, at the end of the day, we can't really say that we are pure -- because we are not, we are flawed and we know this. That's why,  it was ironic how they kept saying Hyun Soo is bad when in fact they are also flawed and they were the ones who did much bad things to Hyun Soo, more than Hyun Soo did to them.

Hyun Soo is not a perfect character. At most times he enjoys dark humor and like almost most human facing a dilemma, he could also engage in cruel things. The examples are: (1) when he saw Moo Jin for the first time and was terrified that his family would be taken away from him if his secret blew up; and (2) the last brawl at episode 15 where he tortured and killed Baek Hee Seung. 

To be honest during episode 15, there's this big part in me who wanted Hyun Soo to kill Hee Seung. Unlike other people, he had the most justifiable reason at least in the eyes of the viewers to kill him. Hee Seung tortured and killed other people along with his father and while he did not kill Ji Won, he almost killed his sister (tho, he did not know this yet). Therefore, I was fascinated and almost moved by Jung Mi Sook's action when Hyun Soo became sure of killing Hee Seung. She was kind -- she was so kind. Her scene was just so powerful. She doesn't want Hyun Soo to be a murderer and if we'll follow Natural Law (forgive me if I was wrong), truly, the end doesn't justify the means. While, Hee Seung was an extremely evil and cruel person, it remained wrong to kill him because in any other view, killing remains wrong morally (well, at least in no other extreme situations which need to call for a utilitarian response) and legally.

What's more disgusting is that the show shows that as long as you share some society-like qualities with other people, even if those qualities tended to be qualities that we would say would be "evil" eg. being manipulative, greedy etc, that you would be safe from being perceived as evil, and being a scapegoat. It's almost as if it's expected that you should be as evil enough (but not too evil) to belong in society but you cannot be so good or angelic that it is impossible for people to understand you. The greatest example of this would be the villagers who weren't good people themselves as you can tell from their gossiping and how they feel "alive" in a sense when they have something to talk about or bond over.  (@missreviews)

By the way, I love how you said those above, if you are surrounded in a group of people with the same goals and no matter how evil those goals are, as long as you are on their side, they will accept you. It was a big internal conflict that we may experience along with our lives.

How do our inherent biases affect our ability to perceive other people at face value? 

I would say that like the villagers our biases greatly affect our ability to perceive other people as one way or the other; particularly, if being in the same village, you hear that so and so is the son/daughter of a serial killer, it's not easy to trust that they too would not follow that path.  (@missreviews)

This one too, it's scary, but once that kind of gossips starts about someone, I myself is guilty of being judgmental. In the drama, not only that people started to view Hyun Soo in that way, but, it was scarier that Hyun Soo doubted himself if he would be like his father.  Hearing that you are bad and you are no good by many people can taunt one's sense of self. It was sad and it was horrible. 

Another thing I also like to add in this discussion is the nature vs nurture that most drama reviewers emphasized about this drama. At one point, that can be true to Hyun Soo and Hee Seung, but I also felt like if I viewed the theory that Hee Seung's nature was evil and that Do Min Seok only accelerated his path to evilness, then I would also be like those village people who kept emphasizing that Hyun Soo was nowhere good.

I believe humans are not evil at their core, I believe there is goodness on every human and yes, while we have different personalities thanks to our genes. I do believe that if put in a healthy environment, we can also choose the right thing. I think Hyun Soo had a loving sister who kept supporting him and nurturing him to become a good person that's why his father wasn't able to make Hyun Soo like him. Whereas, Hee Seung's environment was not that good, although his mother loved him, I saw her as somehow not having a clear authority to her son. Her son easily manipulated him and his father seemed not to care for him that much. The writer also did not give us so much insight about Hee Seung's childhood so I refused to believe that his evilness was his true nature. But, those are just my thoughts. One of the priest that preached in our school said this (non-verbatim)

You are created good by God and therefore you are ought to finish good. 

I sincerely believe that humans have goodness inside of them and I hope that we can all find that. Just as Ji Won and Hae Soo kept finding that goodness that has always been on Hyun Soo all along, may we also help others to know that they are more than what the society perceives of them, more than what the enemy tries to keep saying to them. We are created good, so while we are to stumble upon and be put in the darkness for a while, we will finish good, and once we are freed from that darkness, it will now be our turn to find the light in others too.

To me the entire show kept emphasizing subjectivity.  Everybody has their own morals/codes/bottom line that they abide by. A crime can be big or small from every viewer's different perspective. Morals are widely acceptable behaviour. Stress on "widely". Morality is actually fickle, with it's constraints varying with time and people.

Do Hyun Soo never seemed like a grey character to me at all, simply because he was just a person who has different thinking process than most. He was the most earnest person of all. He tried so hard to not be the person everyone thought/expected him to be. He was afraid of losing his family, the only ones who'd never expected the worst of him. He was a person who always made the "right" choices even though, it could've been easier for him to choose the other options. He made a conscious effort to not become like his father, when being so would have been easier than attempting to be "normal" and building his own family. He was never truly evil throughout the show, he was simply a survivor living in a world he could not feel or connect with.  

If evil is the absence of good and good is the absence of evil then the world would make no sense. Because evil and good, to be honest are again subjective. So instead of dividing ourselves in these two extremes also, let us consider this. Rather than striving to be good, striving to not be evil is enough. Do Hyun Soo is the epitome of this. He didn't want to be like his father, nor did he strive to be a self-sacrificing hero. He existed in that limbo that was not evil and not good. While we all exist in this limbo, what sets apart DHS is, he is not in denial about this limbo. Nobody thinks to themselves 'I'm evil' but can think 'I'm good' while 'I'm not evil' may be the truth. BUT to DHS evil and good did not exist. Only behaviors and consequences. 

A person's identity depends on how loud the voices surrounding them are. If the voices outside them are louder than the voices inside them, then of course the outer voices will have greater influence on them. Rather than think of it as an Nature vs Nurture, it is a question of will and the direction of that will. A person growing up in less than ideal circumstances can turn out incredible if they have the will to persist in their ideals and personality despite the external factors.The same is also true vice versa

 missreviews:

I think we might be able to extrapolate from that balcony scene where he dropped a brick from a high rise building that he had a criminal propensity, so an innate disposition for criminal behaviour that was then nurtured by being around DMS. 

. Another important thing is what the voices outside and inside are telling them.  Coz here Hee Sung's inner voices were upto no good but his outside voices were telling him to be normal. He then found an outside voice (DMS) that matched his inside one and let loose his murder spree.

The apparent bad people in the drama are all the ones, that assumed the worst of DHS. But again subjectivity comes to play. They weren't wrong because, to them DHS was evil as his father was evil. This behaviour to them is normal, as it part of the "morals" and ideologies. The value system that they were used to, will not let them realize that such behaviour was simply baseless prejudice. I kept feeling that the writer wanted DHS to be a misunderstood anti-heroish hero. But DHS was a character who didn't care about being understood or misunderstood save for Cha Ji Won. So all those people weren't the real bad people. The hidden bad ones were Hee Sung's parents, who while knowing the truth of DHS struggle to save his family chose to exploit him, intending him to be the scapegoat.

 Erika Song:

Do you think you are clean?

This is another heavily subjective question. I may consider myself a clean person given the absence of evil actions but what about unkind thought and words that did no real harm but were certainly not clean or pure. What if I consider myself clean having forgotten my past misdeeds or my misdeeds were too negligible? This is like telling an amnesiac who will never recover his memories with a good personality, that he was a murderer. Is he innocent because he is no longer the person that murdered someone or is he guilty because despite his lost memories and altered personality he is the person who commited the murder in the past? Should we deny or acknowledge his new personality that has become his identity?

I think a sociopath is person who is emotionally manipulative while aware of the emotional consequences of their manipulation. A psychopath is a person neither feels emotions nor has the patience to consider the emotional consequences of their actions and simply gives in to their instincts without regard for consequences legally or otherwise. ( This is MY understanding of the two words). 

 Erika Song:

Will you take a pill of not knowing something and live a lie?

I will, if that lie harms no one and only after knowing the truth behind the lie. Blind trust is folly but choosing to live with the lie, after knowing the truth is acceptable. So I guess I'm saying yes to the latter half of the question but not the first one. To most they may choose the first out of habit and reject the latter half.