My son’s class had a book fair recently, and he ended up choosing a Minions book. This got me thinking. The premise of the Minions movie is that, throughout history, the Minions have sought out the most despicable person they could find to be their master. However, their incompetance usually ends up killing their master. Rinse & repeat. So, in a way they end up making the world a better place, by killing off the villains they’re trying to serve.
Is there a literary term for someone who tries to be a villain, but winds up doing good? I think “antihero” doesn’t really describe it, because an antihero is really just anybody who doesn’t fit the traditional “heroic” mold.
Actually they would be schlemiels, while the villains they killed would be the schlimazels. (The traditional formulation is that the *schlemiel *is the one who spills the soup, while the schlimazel is the person he spills it on.) However, there is no implication that a schlimiel is trying to help the schlimazel, nor that the schlimazel is a bad person. I can’t see how this fits.
As far as I can see, he was trying to do good by his actions. He didn’t do good while trying to do evil.
Oskar Schindler would be a better example, since he started out just wanting to make some money off Jewish labor. But he ended up saving his workers deliberately, not by accident.
How about the Hero of Canton, the Man they Call Jayne? He definitely intended the “steal from the rich” part, but the whole “give to the poor” thing was just a panicked accident.
