the villain in every story

[cacian]

is there a villain in all of us?
villain french for baddy
we insist there is one in every story.

[YesNo]

I don't know why but I suspect the answer is yes.

[cacian]

I don't know why but I suspect the answer is yes.

any reason you may outline that makes you think the answer is yes?

[PeterL]

I think that you would have to make your question narrower to get a valid answer. Whether someone is a villain or a baddy is largely a matter of point of view. Humans by their fundamental nature seek what is good for them, and that may not be what you perceive as good for you, so you might sometimes see others as bad from your perspective. Then again there are the people who go around engaging in violence on others.

[TheFifthElement]

There are plenty of stories without villains.

[cacian]

There are plenty of stories without villains.

are you able to recommend one?

[cacian]

I think that you would have to make your question narrower to get a valid answer. Whether someone is a villain or a baddy is largely a matter of point of view. Humans by their fundamental nature seek what is good for them, and that may not be what you perceive as good for you, so you might sometimes see others as bad from your perspective. Then again there are the people who go around engaging in violence on others.

interesting i thought bad was a unanimous meaning.

[TheFifthElement]

are you able to recommend one?

There are hundreds, thousands probably. Any book by Virginia Woolf, Don DeLillo, Nicholson Baker, Ali Smith, Tove Jansson, Cees Nooteboom. To the Lighthouse; If on a winter's night, a traveller; Hunger; The Mill on the Floss; Kristen Lavransdatter...the list is endless.

[prendrelemick]

is there a villain in all of us?
villain french for baddy
we insist there is one in every story.

Also means a low born peasant or serf, which perhaps tells us something.

[YesNo]

any reason you may outline that makes you think the answer is yes?

I agree with PeterL about the relativity of what being a villain means. Take for instance the current Star Wars movie. The bad guy or villain is the one wearing the black helmet, but he probably doesn't see it that way. He probably thinks all those rebels deserve to have their planets blown up. To avoid a complete moral relativism there might be a real good that we are all trying to achieve while stepping on each other's toes.

[Lokasenna]

I think it shows great skill as a writer to make villains who are not simply pure evil. I've just finished watching Amazon's excellent The Man in the High Castle, and by the end of series I'm impressed by the fact that I cannot think of any idividual as 'the villain' of the piece, despite having a cast that includes any number of Nazis, racial supremacists and urban terrorists. It's a testament to the quality of the writing that, by the end of the series, one is rooting for people who have committed terrible acts of evil.

Anyway, everyone loves baddies. They're always the most entertaining thing in a narrative. Give me a Richard III over a Prince Myshkin any day of the week.