# Books with extremely unlikable protagonists **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 13, 2005, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262 "2005-07-13T00:47:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/81 "2005-07-15T19:31:38Z")
> [@parthenokinesis](#): > > [hijack]Um, that was Larry Fishburne (in Othello, I mean, the stick up guy was Sammy L. and I don’t know who you saw on The Daily Show, but Othello was definately Larry) and I can’t imagine him disliking Othello more than Ike Turner! WTF[/hijack] Umm…I’m going to take a wild guess and figure that more than one black male actor has played Othello at one time or another. Keep in mind there are plays out there, too. 😉 -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/82 "2005-07-17T17:04:47Z")
I just came across an oldie but a goodie: Alec Leamas from **The Spy Who Came In From the Cold**. Just a violent, drunk, stupid, misogynistic prick who lets himself be used as a pawn just to get some vengeance. And, from the same book, Control. Control wasn’t the protagonist, but he does have the biggest influence on Alec out of everyone in the book, and he double-crosses this guy terribly. I have to say that non-post-apocalyptic worlds don’t get much bleaker than John LeCarre’s. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/83 "2005-07-17T17:52:43Z")
As far as it’s written, you can’t really tell if Humbert is unlikable or not…but I didn’t feel dislike for anyone in the **text** …except Quilty. Of course, it’s entirely possible that the “reality” behind the prose is different. However, Nabokov does have one other entry in this category: **Ada**. The main protagonists basically ruin everyone’s lives around them (through uncaringness, usually, not proactive evil, but still, you need some empathy to be likeable,) and come out unharmed. The older siblings in Ender’s Game remind me of them. About the only thing that makes me not totally have the pair in Ada is that most everyone else is unlikable too. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/84 "2005-07-17T17:59:49Z")
gahh! [del]have[/del] hate ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/85 "2005-07-17T19:41:53Z")
> [@Cat Jones](#): > > Can’t remember his name but I took an almost instant dislike to the\*\* narrator\*\* of Ishiguro’s ‘ **When We Were Orphans** ’, I struggled to finish the bok and certainly never cared. Christopher something or other. Banks? I wanted to grab him and give him a good shake. “Have you noticed there’s a war going on, you stupid son of a bitch? No one can afford to give a shit about your comparitively minor problem right now!” ---
**Author:** ![marque\_elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71c47a/32.png) [@marque\_elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marque_elf)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/86 "2005-07-17T23:02:57Z")
I love the P.G. Wodehouse books. I think a case can be made for his being the greatest writer in the English language of the 20th century. Much as I like his writing, there was one character of his that I despised. The character is Stanley Ukridge. He is a petty grifter always trying to come up with some get-rich-quick scheme which inevitably fails. I guess the failure is what is supposed to make these story funny but it doesn’t work for me. Bertie Wooster and his fellow Drones are innocents. They borrow money from each and don’t pay it back, they’ll steal a bobbie’s helmet, try to burgle an aunt or uncle’s but it’s always for the best of motives. Ukridge, however, is their dark side. He is trying consciously trying to cheat people. He’s just not very good at it. I always wanted to tell him that he put half as much energy into a real job as he did his grifting, he’d soon be well off. Maybe that was also supposed to be part of what made the character amusing. If so, it never worked for me. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/87 "2005-07-18T01:37:59Z")
In brief: **Don Quixote** is the biggest tool anyone ever spent 800+ pages on; Poor Hector in **Ghost Country** by Sara Paretsky is the only character in the book I wasn’t hoping would die horribly by the end of the novel; Lyra from **His Dark Materials** is probably the most two-dimentional character I can think of - which even still is better than \*\*Between The Acts \*\* by Virginia Woolf, which as far as I can tell has \*no main character \* at all. ---
**Author:** ![Elysian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@Elysian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysian)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262/88 "2005-07-18T02:23:58Z")
Thomas Covenant is the most horrible protagonist by far. Maybe we were supposed to like him because he was a leper, or at least excuse the subsequent rape because he was such a tortured soul, but he so disgraced himself I was wishing his penis would rot and fall off at one point. I finished the first book, said “That bastard didn’t die a horrible death? I’ve got to read the next one to see when he dies.” I was so sure that Thomas would be dipped in acid or something that I finished the second book before saying hell with it and never touching the series again. There’s another protagonist I didn’t like – the lead in _The Devil Wore Prada_. Our library has a very small selection of audio books and the title and writeup sounded good, so I listened to it in the car on my trips to school. I wanted to strangle the bitch at one point. She’s a highly paid assistant to the best fashion editor, and all she had to do was stick with her job for a year and she would be moved to the editorial staff and get a great position. But she was so unhappy that the fashion editor wanted her to pick up drycleaning that she quit (I assume, I didn’t make it that far in the book). I want to talk to the author (it was semi-autobiographical) and tell her what a spoiled brat she is. Oh, and her boyfriend is a prat, too, and all of her friends are assholes, and I hate her. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-extremely-unlikable-protagonists/312262.md?page=4)