I want to feel for the bad guy. I want a bad guy that has good reason as to why he does the evil things that he does.
I want to feel for the bad guy. I want a bad guy that has good reason as to why he does the evil things that he does.
The count of monte cristo. revenge is a meal best served cold.
but i guess hes the main guy..... hes just the victim who then does bad things. does that count?
Paradise lost. The bad guy doesn't get any "badder" (Satan). Yet the poem is written so that you can't help but feel sorry for him to a large extent and sympathize with his toils.
hmmm. I see Amazon has this-http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Lost-...ref=pd_sim_b_1
You see I'm not a big fan of poetry.
It's actually not bad, it reads more like a Shakespearean play. Satan really does make a great anti-villain, too.Originally Posted by spookymulder93
Lolita's an idea. For a child molester, Humbert Humbert is pretty depressing and you wind up feeling sorry for the guy.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
The Rochester-part in Jane Eyre? He is thoroughly bad, but he charms everyone to death clearly and we all love him by the end, still, he's the devil in desguise (literally even). Great character.
Last edited by kiki1982; 07-21-2010 at 05:07 AM.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
How about Hugo's Les Miserables? Inspector Javert is a tremendously compelling character who is technically on the side of good; his absolute belief in law, order and justice make him utterly untractable when dealing with the moral ambiguities of life.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
Yes! I didn't think about that! You really feel kind of sorry for him in the end...
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
As Hugo himself puts it (translated, of course):
Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice, - error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
May I sugest The Picture Of Dorian Gray
Othello. Try feeling sorry for Iago.
Isn't that an oxymoron? Can you have a good reason to do bad things? If an action is evil then on the application of good reason shouldn't you refrain from doing it? Otherwise how can it be "good" reason?
If I ended up feeling sorry for Satan and Humbert I would be very worried about the state of my soul.
Are there any works that can help you refrain you from feeling sorry for the bad guy? Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics might be the central suggestion, but it's a hard grind and his penchant for slave ownership worries me.
Jane Austen's "Emma" has a bad guy who thinks he has good reasons to mess Emma about (a bit) to get what he wants (which is something very good.) It's interesting, and funny, to see how Emma and friends deal with him. (Not by feeling sorry for him that's for sure! But also not by casting him into hell.) This character doesn't plum the depths of evil (nowhere near!) like Satan or Humbert, but it's a very good novel (in every sense.)
For Humberts, it shows how a character who has inappropriate feelings for a young girl should deal with them. Austen expresses this very subtly towards the end of the novel. "Emma" should be required reading in the paedo wing... and for those who like Humbert too much...
Last edited by mal4mac; 07-21-2010 at 05:57 AM.
Churchill of Emma is not really 'the bad guy'.
SEVERE SPOILERS
He hasn't even be able to attach her, so essentially, no-one has a reason to be really angry with him. Although, they do have a reason to be angry, not with him, but with themselves, because they were all deceived, and that is what mortifies practically the whole community in the end, but they of course blame him, as people do. It has never been yourself who is at fault.
He is rich, he is handsome (blonde and blue-eyed no doubt) and looks, indeed, like an angel. Their opinion is already formed before he comes to Highbury: he will court Emma, he must court her, is there anyone else to court after all?
In short, he never courted her, never did anything to attach her, only the people thought he was and at a certain moment she fancies he has asked her, in covered terms, for her hand in marriage, whereas he has done or said nothing that denotes it, apart from a lot of imagination which already dreamed up that scenario before he was even on the scene.
SEVERE SPOILERS OVER
He is hardly an evil man. He is rather there to afford Austen the means of uncovering the judgmentalness of 'the community'.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I'm reading The Moon and Sixpence by W Somerset Maugham at the moment. Charles Strickland is a pretty un-nice guy (wouldn't say necessarily evil, but he's not nice) with, I suppose, a good reason for his behaviour. He's a fairly unsympathetic character anyway. It's a good read.
Have you ever read any Japanese fiction? I find that in Japanese fiction they tend to avoid the idea of 'hero' and 'villain' entirely. There are people who do good things and bad things. It's a subtle difference. If you like horror type genre you might like something like Out by Natsuo Kirino or one of Ryu Murakami's novels.
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Well, Frollo in Hunchback of Notre Dame has issues that make you feel sorry for him.
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