SOME LITERARY BAD guys you can’t help but love a little, while others you just love to hate. How many of these unctuous, infamous, demonic, obsequious, dastardly, and just plain evil characters in fiction can you name? Bonus points for title and author.
1. This orphan returns to his adoptive home a rich man, and there he wreaks physical and psychological vengeance on the families who spurned him.
2. This monster crawls from a murky lake to feed on Danish warriors; once he is killed, his mother avenges his death.
3. The cruel sister of David Copperfield’s stepmother, she is the “confidential friend” of David’s wife Dora Spenlow.
4. This twisted character changes his last name from “Prynne” to something tellingly cold-sounding in order to avoid association with his adulterous wife.
5. Though he was christened Tom Marvolo Riddle, this villain is so feared that none dare speak his name.
6. This brilliant psychiatrist has an insatiable appetite for something unspeakable.
7. This cruel plantation owner tries to break slaves of their religious beliefs.
8. An obsessed police officer, this character eventually throws himself into the River Seine.
9. This impulsive, lusty beast is the alter ego of a mild-mannered scientist.
ANSWERS
1. Heathcliff, in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
2. Grendel, in Beowulf.
3. Miss Jane Murdstone, in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.
4. Roger Chillingworth, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
5. Lord Voldemort, in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
6. The cannibalistic Hannibal Lecter, in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal Rising.
7. Simon Legree, in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
8. Inspector Javert, in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
9. Mr. Hyde, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.