---

---

When the Netflix historical drama Death by Lightning premiered in 2025, it revived the tragic and largely forgotten assassination of U.S. President James A. Garfield. The series dramatizes the life and death of Garfield while also exploring the psyche of his killer, Charles J. Guiteau — a man widely described as unstable, delusional, and driven by grandiose beliefs that he deserved political power.

Yet the narrative raises a difficult ethical question that extends far beyond this single story: how should historical dramas portray political assassins?

The problem is not simply historical accuracy. It is moral framing. Portray assassins too simplistically and they become cartoon villains; portray them too sympathetically and the narrative risks glorifying violence or excusing murder. The tension is particularly sharp in dramatizations of real political violence, where storytelling intersects with public memory, mental health discourse, and the ethics of representation.

This review examines the ethical problem of portraying presidential assassins through four key lenses:

Mental Illness ≠ Inevitability of Violence

---

One of the most ethically delicate aspects of portraying Guiteau — or any assassin — is the role of mental illness. Historical accounts show that Guiteau had a long history of erratic behavior and delusional thinking. He believed he had personally ensured Garfield’s election and deserved a diplomatic appointment, and when rejected he convinced himself that killing the president was a divine mission.

During his trial in 1881–1882, Guiteau insisted that God had ordered the assassination, and his defense attempted to argue insanity. The case became one of the first major American trials to debate the insanity defense in a high-profile way.  

From a historical perspective, portraying Guiteau as mentally unstable is accurate. The ethical problem emerges when storytelling implicitly suggests a causal chain:

mental illness → violence → assassination

That narrative structure is misleading.

Modern psychiatric research overwhelmingly shows that most people with mental illness are not violent, and are more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence. When films or series repeatedly link instability with murder, they reinforce damaging stereotypes.

Dramatic storytelling intensifies this risk because it seeks psychological motivation. Writers feel compelled to explain why a character commits an atrogeous act. But explanation can easily slide into narrative justification.

In Death by Lightning, Guiteau’s delusions — his belief that God commanded him to act, his obsession with political recognition, and his grandiose self-image — are central to the story. The show attempts to portray him as both dangerous and tragic: a failed man desperate for recognition in a political system that rewarded patronage and loyalty.

That framing may be historically grounded. Yet it creates a subtle ethical tension.

If audiences leave believing Guiteau killed Garfield simply because he was “crazy,” they misunderstand both history and mental illness. His actions were also shaped by social factors: political patronage culture, personal ambition, and the toxic media environment of the Gilded Age.

In other words, mental illness may explain Guiteau’s worldview — but it does not explain the assassination alone.

Ethically responsible storytelling must therefore resist a simplistic narrative of madness. Violence is never inevitable.

The Media Fascination with Assassins

---

Another ethical challenge arises from the long-standing cultural fascination with assassins themselves. History shows that the killers often become more famous than their victims.

This pattern is visible across multiple presidential assassinations:

Each name is deeply embedded in American cultural memory.

Yet ask many Americans about the presidents they killed, and the answers are less detailed. The assassin’s identity becomes inseparable from the national tragedy.

This phenomenon has several causes:

1. Narrative Structure

Storytelling gravitates toward conflict. The assassin provides a clear antagonist, often with dramatic motivations and psychological complexity.

2. The “Why” Question

Audiences are fascinated by motive. Understanding why someone commits political murder feels like solving a mystery.

3. Cultural Mythology

Assassins often become symbols of larger social anxieties — political extremism, alienation, ideological radicalization.

But this fascination creates an ethical risk: the killer becomes the protagonist of the story. In some narratives, the assassin receives more screen time than the victim. The victim becomes a symbol, while the perpetrator becomes a character. The result is a troubling inversion of moral focus.

In the case of Death by Lightning, the story attempts to balance Garfield’s life with Guiteau’s descent into delusion. This is ethically important because Garfield himself was a remarkable historical figure — a Civil War hero, scholar, and reformer whose presidency was cut short after only a few months.  

Without that balance, the series could easily become another story about the killer instead of the victim.

A Pattern in Presidential Assassinations

---

Guiteau’s portrayal becomes even more ethically complex when placed in the broader context of presidential assassinations.

American history has four successful assassinations:

Each assassination generated its own narrative mythology.

Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth

Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, saw himself as a political martyr. For decades afterward, he became the central figure in conspiracy theories and dramatic retellings of the assassination.

McKinley and Leon Czolgosz

Czolgosz was an anarchist who believed he was striking a blow against capitalism. In many historical accounts, the ideology of anarchism becomes the focal point rather than McKinley himself.

Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald

No presidential assassination has generated more speculation than JFK’s. Entire industries — books, films, documentaries — have revolved around Oswald’s identity, motives, and possible conspiracies.

Across these cases, the assassin’s narrative becomes a cultural obsession.

This pattern raises a crucial ethical question:

Does retelling these stories risk immortalizing the killers?

Historical drama cannot ignore assassins; they are central to the event. But the balance of attention matters. The ethical responsibility lies in ensuring that the narrative ultimately centers on the historical consequences of the crime, not the notoriety of the perpetrator.

The Responsibility of Historical Drama

---

The creators of historical dramas face a unique challenge: they must tell compelling stories about real tragedies.

Assassinations present particularly difficult terrain because they involve:

In the case of Death by Lightning, the creators drew heavily from historian Candice Millard’s book Destiny of the Republic, which frames Garfield’s assassination as a turning point in American political reform.

Garfield’s death exposed the dangers of the patronage system and helped accelerate the push for civil service reform, eventually leading to the The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. 

In that sense, the assassination becomes more than a crime — it becomes a moment of historical transformation.

A responsible dramatization therefore reframes the narrative around what the assassination changed, not merely how it happened. That shift moves the story away from sensationalism and toward historical understanding.

Sympathy vs. Understanding

---

The most controversial question surrounding portrayals of assassins is whether psychological depth risks generating sympathy. Humanizing a villain is a common storytelling technique. By showing their background, struggles, and motivations, writers create complex characters.

But when the villain is a real murderer, this approach becomes ethically charged. Viewers may interpret humanization as sympathy — even when that is not the intention.

Consider the difference between two narrative approaches:

Approach A: Demonization

The assassin is portrayed as pure evil with no explanation.

Approach B: Humanization

The assassin is portrayed as a flawed human shaped by psychological and social factors.

Neither approach is ethically perfect. Demonization oversimplifies history. Humanization risks moral ambiguity.

The ethical goal is something more precise:

understanding without absolution

This means explaining motives without excusing actions.

In Guiteau’s case, historical evidence shows that he experienced delusions, narcissistic fantasies, and a lifelong pattern of failure. But those factors do not diminish the moral reality of his crime. Garfield was murdered. Any dramatization must preserve that moral clarity.

Education Through Dramatization

---

Despite these risks, historical drama can also serve an important educational role. Many Americans know little about Garfield’s presidency or his assassination. Compared with Lincoln or Kennedy, Garfield’s death occupies a relatively small place in national memory.

Series like Death by Lightning can restore attention to overlooked history.

The show highlights several historically significant themes:

Garfield survived the initial shooting but died weeks later due largely to infection caused by doctors probing his wounds with unsterilized instruments — reflecting the slow adoption of antiseptic medicine in the United States.   These details matter because they place the assassination within a broader historical context.

When dramatization focuses on these themes, it moves beyond sensational storytelling toward historical inquiry.

The Ethics of Remembering Violence

---

Portraying presidential assassins is ethically complicated because these figures sit at the intersection of crime, politics, and public memory.

Stories about them must balance several competing responsibilities:

Death by Lightning attempts to walk that line by depicting Charles Guiteau as both delusional and dangerous while emphasizing the broader tragedy of Garfield’s lost presidency.

But the ethical challenge remains. Historical storytelling should ultimately remind audiences of something simple but profound:

The true significance of an assassination lies not in the killer — but in the life that was lost and the history that changed because of it.

When dramatization preserves that perspective, it can transform fascination with violence into deeper historical understanding.

Death by Lightning is available now with a subscription to Netflix…