Evil Characters in Fiction - Including My Own

Something I'm really excited about for next year is a module on my English Literature course called Evil and Literature. Oh my lords, I am so... Indescribably excited. I absolutely love evil characters. Now there's nothing wrong with Mr (or Miss/Mrs/Ms). Mustache-twiling-cape-wearing-evil-doer, but one thing I'm growing to love in the modern age is our absolute need to understand and comprehend the enemies we face in literature (and to extent the world around us). We want to understand what it is to be evil, why a person turns evil, could we sympathise with evil and be evil ourselves, and is there anything we can do to prevent evil?

Now I may have got this wrong, (in which case, I need to read the module handbook again), but I read we can do our own exploration in literature and look at a book of our own choosing. So one of the books I would love to look at is Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. If you've only heard of the musical, get your fine derriere down to a bookshop or go on amazon and buy it! It's a fantastic book, really well crafted, with many political, social and psychological allusions. It questions society's ability to deliberately misunderstand someone's intentions, particularly if that person wants to change the society they're in. It looks at political activism, as well as apathy, social conformity and individuality. Don't get me wrong, the musical is fantastic, but in a way it saddens me that the book has kind of received less attention due to the musical being so popular. As with any book and a transferal to stage or screen, the musical misses out on a lot of these crucial ideas or skims over them. Understandable, because it would probably be a very boring musical if they tried to look at them in more depth. But I highly recommend the book.

It is an odd thing in the Wizard of Oz (which I still absolutely adore and used to watch every time I went over to my Granny's), I loved Dorothy (admittedly because I look a little bit like her and really wanted to play that role if I ever got the chance). But I also loved the Wicked Witch of the West. I was never entirely sure why, it wasn't that she was evil. More that she didn't give a damn. I think I like villains who really couldn't give a damn whether you thought they were evil or not. And maybe I have a thing for Witches too.

The White Witch of the Narnian Chronicles and The Grand Witch from The Witches, have always been amongst my favourite female villains. Though both terrified me. The White Witch with her ice cold beauty, fearsome temper and her willingness to sacrifice a young boy. The Grand Witch with her ruthless plan, the way she treated other Witches and just the way she looked was horrifying. We are taught to instinctively fear these women, especially when they consider the murder of children or young people, because it goes so against a perceived feminine nature. But there is something innately fascinating about these female characters and I think that's the reason why when I wrote my Jack the Ripper script, There is Only Hell, I chose a female anti-hero to be my Jack. Cathie is an abortionist and a midwife, both the devil and an angel in the Victorian London streets. When her lover is killed and she seeks revenge, her actions are both understandable and extreme.

Tilda Swinton...You are amazing!

Holy Hell! I forgot how scary this film was!
This would probably be illegal nowadays!

Male villains never bothered me that much. Maybe because there's a leaning in society that suggests due to women's volatile and passionate natures, you don't have to explain so much about the why, the what and the how. That in the role of the Wicked Witch and the Dangerous Seductress, we don't have to bother explaining about what makes a woman evil. Though most people would probably consider that lazy story telling. But I have noticed with male villains there's a tendency to go into great detail about what makes them evil.


We looked at Witches, so let's look at a Wizard. The greatest, evil Wizard of our time. I probably don't even have to say his name. It's You Know Who. The Witches above don't really represent the tragic villain, they just are evil. But Voldemort took a path which ultimately made him evil. His desire to replicate a similar feeling of love and being wanted, lead him to his desire to become a ruler over and of Death. In a way Harry and Voldemort create a reflection of one another. We can see how they represent the polar opposites, yet the similarities of one another are undeniable. Harry's popularity and then growing isolation, reflect Voldemort's isolation and then popularity amongst his peers. Their desire to find a place where they both belong are symbolised in Hogwarts, but Harry's emotional belonging is due to his friends and the love he feels for those who are close to him; Voldemort's is constantly represented in materialistic items, first Hogwarts, then the Horcruxes.

It was this materality that I wanted to represent in my own fanfiction of A Simple Rose, which depicts Voldemort's ancestor Salazar Slytherin. In one scene, he and Helga are discussing a wild rose plant.

My fingers curled round several unopened, green buds and I couldn’t hide my childish smile on seeing the small, sharp pink-red thorns. I was hoping for a pale white blossom. A long fingered, elegant hand rested near mine and I looked up to Salazar examining the plant. 

“I do not recognise this. It is no magical plant or herb, I take it?” 

I grinned, “Nay, this is a simple wild rose. Found all over this isle.” 

He frowned further, “Then what is its use?” 

I carefully inspected the leaves for blight or insects, but was content with what I saw, “Alas, it has none. It is but a flower to look fair and smell sweetly. Though there are some who say it relieves aches, especially those of the stomach, yet mint and wormwood work better.” 

“Then why grow it at all?” his dark eyes near glared into mine, and I almost took a step back as though I feared him, yet what I felt was not fear in its entirety.

It begins the discussion of purpose ('oh not that again!' some people cry who have read my previous blogpost - don't worry, it won't be as in depth as last time). Helga admits that her joy is 'childish', but her joy is profound and she shows a respect for life from the beginning. It doesn't matter whether she considers the life is without purpose or reason, to her it is still beautiful. Salazar, on the other hand, wants its purpose and if it has none, then he considers you shouldn't grow it at all. It is this desire that leads to him desiring control above everything else, controlling the people around him and thus controlling the muggle-born population in Hogwarts.

Let's now look at an absent villain, or a more symbolic one. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings the power of Sauron is never directly represented in a fully formed villain (except for in the Silmarillion and the Appendixes, etc). We never see him. We see his henchmen and hear their voices. Saruman is the unknown Wizard in the forest, the Hierophant, a person who can claim all spiritual and earthly knowledge, a power we cannot know or question. The Orcs represent what we may become if we lose all dignity, respect and humanity; Tolkien's depiction of Orcs being produced from tortured Elves, represents the two opposite spheres of knowledge, grace and beauty, contrasting with ignorance, malice and ugliness. Both represent ideas of what we could become. The Ringwraiths again represent this, but on a more human level, showing mankind's ability to fall when tempted by power. In looking at this interpretation, we could argue that Eowyn's defeat of the WitchKing was even more symbolic than the book suggests. It is a woman that defeats male fear, obsession and temptation.

The Lord of the Rings film trilogy gives the audience the opening introduction, narrated by Galadriel. We see Sauron, whereas in the books we don't; but in films this becomes a necessity in a way. Absent villains work better in books, where the reader uses their imagination to create the villain in their mind and Sauron is more of an ideological villain, than a real one. But on the screen this can only go so far, films are a visual medium and so we visually need to see the villains. It's quite tricky to work out what is scary about a tower and a ring. Hence why there are so many supporting villains, ranging from small ones like Grima Wormtongue and Denethor, to larger villains like the Uruk hai and the Ringwraiths. But when there are scenes that focus on the ring and the tower, all of our senses have to be used in the best way possible. The Ringwraiths look and sound scary, you probably could get away with not having any sound and they would still look scary, or hear that blood-curdling cry and not see them, and they'd still be terrifying. Without any sound for the Ring...it would look like a very non-frightening ring.

In this scene, Frodo is about to destroy the ring. The music is building, we're all getting very excited, because this is the moment the entire trilogy has been building up to. Sam is getting more and more desperate, Frodo is going a bit nuts, etc. When the camera has a close shot of the ring, the music cuts out, we get this high pitched noise (almost like the ringwraiths' scream), a whispering and the flashes of light. The swaying backwards and forwards, not only reminds us of Frodo's decision, but almost makes the ring look alive. It is through this visual and auditory format that the villain is represented, the villain of the ring and of Frodo's mindset. But even in this ending, we get another two visual stand-ins. We have Gollum fighting Frodo and then we cut back to Aragorn fighting the troll (I think it's a troll). What's interesting was how, originally, they were going to have Aragorn fighting Sauron. But ended up cutting this out as the ending is not really about Aragorn defeating evil, but Frodo. The unlikely underdog destroying the epitome of all evil, rather than the rightful King claiming his inheritance and defeating the bad guy as would normally happen in most stories.

So this is something I certainly can't wait to study in more depth and I am looking forward to my third, and final, year at University.