The overarching aim is to explore what teachers perceive as theopportunities provided by using literature in ethics education incompulsory school. When being interviewed, in what ways do theteachers express views on the potential of fiction to encouragestudents to accept certain human conditions as imaginable, or tocreate motivation for ethical change, by means of the capacity offiction to evoke feelings? Also, in what ways do the teachers interviewedconsider fiction to be useful for evoking thoughts about howsomething could have turned out, in situations that are morallycomplex? What makes compassion grow within human beings arelinked in this article to the concepts as is and as if in play research (cf).Analytical tools are developed and used to explain how, and why, theuse of literature is suitable for work with ethics in compulsory school.