# Literary characters who come to symbolize the opposite of how they were portrayed. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 24, 2010, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304 "2010-06-24T01:52:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/21 "2010-06-24T12:09:59Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > Of course he was tragic. He was created and instantly banished by his creator. He hid in a basement and came to love the people upstairs, who rejected him as soon as they saw him even though he did everything in his power to save them. He confronted his creator and demanded a companion so he could leave the world of men who hated him without being eternally lonely. His creator complied but then destroyed the companion. > > If anyone had a right to be furious it was the monster. Meanwhile **Dracula** is oft seen as a calculating suave European aristocrat who charms the ladies. In the book, he’s a hypnotic manipulator (he gets to Lucy through her sleep) and a rapist (Mina). **Renfield** meanwhile has been used as comedy relief and/or shown as a mindless lackey, whereas he was in the book a devoted-disciple turned repentant-martyr. ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_C.Semone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/cc9497/32.png) [@Ronald\_C.Semone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronald_C.Semone)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/22 "2010-06-24T12:16:45Z")
And then there is Job. Today someone who behaves in a Job-like manner accepts what fate gives him or her without complaining. In the bible, of course, Job takes it for a while and then curses God and spends the rest of the book railing against God. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/23 "2010-06-24T13:09:45Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > Of course he was tragic. He was created and instantly banished by his creator. He hid in a basement and came to love the people upstairs, who rejected him as soon as they saw him even though he did everything in his power to save them. He confronted his creator and demanded a companion so he could leave the world of men who hated him without being eternally lonely. His creator complied but then destroyed the companion. > > If anyone had a right to be furious it was the monster. Sounds pretty tragic, until you remember what he did to Elizabeth and Safie. I’m gonna stick with “calculating killer.” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/24 "2010-06-24T13:39:32Z")
The OP’s first example was what I immediately thought of when I read the thread title. Uncle Tom went through _hell_ in the book, showing great spirit and resistance. To portray him as a sycophantic, scraping, apologizing servant is downright insulting. The transformation apparently took place mainly through stage adaptations of the work (which were popular from the start), and show the changes in race relations from pre-Civil War to Reconstruction to the early 20th century, which is where Tom looked the poorest and least backboned. After that point, I don’t think anyone took the character seriously, and he was mainly known by the pitiful image he had become. Interestingly, the _Classics Illustrated_ comic book adaptation always showed Tom in a good light, exactly as Harriet Beecher Stowe originally wrote him. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/25 "2010-06-24T13:50:11Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > Sounds pretty tragic, until you remember what he did to Elizabeth and Safie. I’m gonna stick with “calculating killer.” Safie? She was fine having fled with the rest of the DeLancey family. And it could be argued that killing Elizabeth was, while unjustified, at least provoked by Victor’s reneging on his promise to provide a mate for the monster. Now, if you mean what he did to little William and Justine Moritz, I’m with you there! ---
**Author:** ![Promethea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Promethea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Promethea)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/26 "2010-06-24T13:51:51Z")
> [@Disposable Hero](#): > > I had this experience after watching, ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, in popular culture a ‘Colonel Blimp’ is a buffonish upper-class figure of fun whereas I found the character in the film to be a decent, likable and honourable man, if somewhat out of touch with the times. > > The film wasn’t what I expected at all and is worth a watch. Well, that’s how he started life, as a cartoon by David Low and he really is like how you originally imagined him to be in those cartoons. The film version came later and though inspired by the cartoons, is still a deliberate reinterpretation of the character in a more sympathetic light. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/27 "2010-06-24T14:00:26Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > The OP’s first example was what I immediately thought of when I read the thread title. I had read the book as a child, and was greatly surprised the first time I heard someone use “Uncle Tom” to mean “bootlicker”. Don Quijote and Sancho Panza are very complex characters; the archetypes based on them are much more linear. While not exactly opposite, Don Quijote does a lot more than tilt against windmills and Sancho is shown to be a capable governor, not merely a neverending source of sayings. More than once their friends are left wondering whether it’s Alonso Quijano or them who is insane. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/28 "2010-06-24T14:06:31Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > Sounds pretty tragic, until you remember what he did to Elizabeth and Safie. I’m gonna stick with “calculating killer.” Well, thats the tragedy. He becomes a monster because he’s treated like one. Is using Nimrod as an insult really from people misunderstanding its use in Bugs Bunny? I’d never heard that, but it makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/29 "2010-06-24T14:10:10Z")
Near-obligatory Tropes link: [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdaptationDecay](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdaptationDecay) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/30 "2010-06-24T14:30:06Z")
movie adaptations frequently change plot and character out of all recognition. Herman Wouk, in a foreword to his book **City Boy** , noted that his 11 year old Jewish boy became a non-Jewish teenage girl when it became a movie under the title _her First Romance_. the Wikipedia entry says that the plot elements are largely the same, but I don’t know about the characters:p > **[City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Boy:_The_Adventures_of_Herbie_Bookbinder)** > > City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder is a 1948 novel by Herman Wouk first published by Simon & Schuster. The second novel written by Wouk, City Boy was largely ignored by the reading public until the success of The Caine Mutiny resurrected interest in Wouk's writing. Like The Caine Mutiny, the novel is semi-autobiographical in setting and situations, if not protagonist. In 1969 the novel was re-issued, with paperback editions in 1980 and 1992, and according to Wouk was translated into In... ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/31 "2010-06-24T15:29:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Hamlet is suppose to represent overly intellectual vacillation, indecision and ineffectuality. But Shakespeare’s character is a hot-blooded young man of action who can barely restrain his rage > \ I might add that Hamlet hesitates because he does not entirely trust the Ghost. He knows that it is a supernatural apparition, not that it is truely the spirit of his father; it might well be a demon assaying to tempt him into sin. He has to verify its claims. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/32 "2010-06-24T15:31:48Z")
> [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](#): > > Back on Romeo and Juliet: this is not a story of true love thwarted by the winds of chance. The tragedy here is not that these crazy kids couldn’t make it work – how often have feuding families been brought together by the marriage of their scions? No. A couple of fourteen year olds (actually, it says specifically that Juliet is maybe two weeks away from fourteen, and we can’t really expect Romeo to be much older – sixteen, tops) meet each other, fall in lust, and end up causing violent riots in the city based on their and their friends’ inability to keep their mouths shut. They’re hasty and overdramatic and willing to kill themselves and plenty of other people for a person they met over the weekend. > > It is not tragic that they could not be together forever. It is tragic that two horny teenagers started riots in the streets of Verona and got innocent people killed for a brief infatuation. This seems a misreading of the play, though I haven’t read it in a long time. For one thing, 13-year-old Juliet and 15-year-old Romeo were both of marriageable age; for another, the feud between their families predates them. The Friar is willing to assist them largely because he hopes their union will lead to a cessation of hostilities, and the escalation of same is occasioned by the murder of Mercutio and Romeo’s avenging of it. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/33 "2010-06-24T15:35:40Z")
> [@Ronald\_C.Semone](#): > > And then there is Job. Today someone who behaves in a Job-like manner accepts what fate gives him or her without complaining. In the bible, of course, Job takes it for a while and then curses God and spends the rest of the book railing against God. I will have to look it up when I get home, but I can think of at least one Biblical historian–maybe Jack Miles, in God: A Biography–who opines that Job actually wins the argument with Yahweh, and both of them know it. Yahweh, in making such extensive reference to his greater power, is conceding that He cannot win the debate except by violence; i.e., that He is in the wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/34 "2010-06-24T15:51:05Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > You can say that again. I honestly thought she was a bit of a temptress, taking advantage of a broken man. Wow. I am very bad at interpreting art, though…my husband sometimes gets angry at me, I get stuff so wrong. And I really do try to see the layers, and the symbolism, and everything. But I still rarely get it. Don’t worry. Freudian Slit has the book wrong. Of course Lolita is a victim, but the point of the book is that Humbert is supposed to know better, even though Lolita is in fact a temptress, a junior version of her mother. Check out Chapter 29. > [@](#): > > Frigid gentlewomen of the jury! I had thought that months, perhaps years, would elapse before I dated to reveal myself to Dolores Haze; but by six she was wide awake, and by six fifteen we were technically overs, I am going to tell you something strange. It was she who seduced me… > > “You mean,” she persisted, now kneeling above me, “you never did it when you were a kid?” > “Never,” I answered quite truthfully. > “Okay,” said Lolita, “here is where we start.” and then he takes her virginity. Oh, no, he doesn’t. Sweet 11-year-old Dolores Haze is no virgin, having lost it to a boy named Charlie before Humbert came along. Yes, the book is often misunderstood, and yes, Humbert is a monster, though I always found the section where he blackmails her for blow jobs every morning to get her milk money the true horror. But Lolita is not an innocent victim either. That as much as anything was what got the book its notoriety. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/35 "2010-06-24T15:56:34Z")
I don’t think so, **Expapno**. We had a thread on it a while ago and pretty much everyone else agreed with me. I’ll try to find it. Just because she’s not a virgin when she had sex with Humbert doesn’t mean she’s not an innocent victim. (I’m not even sure what innocent victim really means.) Are only virgins capable of being defiled? I think that’s a disturbing idea. Lots of kids play doctor or whatnot at that age–do we really have to call little kids playing or experimenting “temptresses”? That feels really wrong to me. And again, from what I know, it’s very normal for young girls to experiment with their sexuality. To even play with the idea of tempting older men. I think every young girl kind of likes the idea of that power. But I don’t know that that makes her a temptress. Lolita definitely did crush on Hum, but the fact that he saw her naive, adolescent sexuality as proof of her leading him astray is what makes him so perverse. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/36 "2010-06-24T16:02:09Z")
You see Lolita through Humbert’s eyes, and he certainly wants her to be a willing participant. And in many ways, I think she was. I’d slice the difference between the “she seduced him” (Frankly Humbert’s such a letch that he’d think that) and she’s innocent - she isn’t innocent, but she also has no idea what she is playing with. She’s full aware that her sexuality can be used to get things, including attention, she is too young to recognize that isn’t a good thing (although age don’t always fix that, it at least provides the opportunity to fix it - its the rare young girl who isn’t fascinated by her own sexuality - but has ANY CLUE about the ethics of sex). ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/37 "2010-06-24T16:10:15Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > You see Lolita through Humbert’s eyes, and he certainly wants her to be a willing participant. > > And in many ways, I think she was. I’d slice the difference between the “she seduced him” (Frankly Humbert’s such a letch that he’d think that) and she’s innocent - she isn’t innocent, but she also has no idea what she is playing with. She’s full aware that her sexuality can be used to get things, including attention, she is too young to recognize that isn’t a good thing (although age don’t always fix that, it at least provides the opportunity to fix it - its the rare young girl who isn’t fascinated by her own sexuality - but has ANY CLUE about the ethics of sex). Yeah. But I do have to wonder, are there any innocent victims? You know, the age old idea that you discredit the rape victim by saying that, gasp, she likes sex or she’s had sex. I don’t think any of us really qualify as “real” victims. I’m just so uncomfortable with the idea that she’s not innocent, so is she a victim? You can be “un-innocent” and be really vulnerable. Or even more vulnerable. I’m reminded of someone here on this board who said that prostitutes suffer less from rape and thus we should punish it less. I think I’m probably more sympathetic to someone who doesn’t fit the innocent victim profile because it’s so much harder for someone like that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/38 "2010-06-24T16:45:03Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Yeah. But I do have to wonder, are there any innocent victims? You know, the age old idea that you discredit the rape victim by saying that, gasp, she likes sex or she’s had sex. I don’t think any of us really qualify as “real” victims. I’m just so uncomfortable with the idea that she’s not innocent, so is she a victim? You can be “un-innocent” and be really vulnerable. Or even more vulnerable. I’m reminded of someone here on this board who said that prostitutes suffer less from rape and thus we should punish it less. I think I’m probably more sympathetic to someone who doesn’t fit the innocent victim profile because it’s so much harder for someone like that. The whole “innocent victim” notion is a red herring. Nabokov was commenting on American notions of sex and sexuality in the book. By using a pre-pubescent girl (something the movies always fail on, since they must use post-pubescent girls) to demonstrate his thesis, he strips away all the baggage that normally hides adult sexuality. It’s very similar to the way science fiction writers set their stories in alien worlds or times, to rid the reader of the crutch of familiar context. Lolita cannot be simply a victim. That would rob the novel of all of its complexity. She is and must be complicit in his outrages. She is a victim, and a survivor, and a seducer, and a bland average American woman blinded by our culture. Your uncomfortableness with all this is exactly what Nabokov wanted. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/39 "2010-06-24T16:46:05Z")
Scarlett O’Hara is seen as an airhead of a Southern Belle, but she is actually a pragmatist, willing to do whatever she must to survive. ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304/40 "2010-06-24T16:50:03Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I think the most tragic part of the story is that the adults that they turned to for guidence utterly failed them by helping them find a way to be together rather than try to talk sense into them. That’s always been my take on **Romeo and Juliet**. Of course the title characters are hotheaded and impetuous, they’re a couple of kids. (Yeah, I know 14 then does not equal 14 now, but their incompletely developed brains would still have been bombarded with teenage hormones.) Their “wise” elders absolutely let them down. How about **King Arthur**? Often he’s held up as an ideal ruler, wise and self-sacrificing, defending the weak, even attempting to introduce elements of democracy into the monarchy. Now there may not be a single definitive source in his case, but many of our modern tellings are based on our influenced by **Le Mort d’Arthur** , and in that he can be a right bastard.\* In one memorable passage he allows (if not orders) a wooden ship to be loaded with infants and set adrift at sea. But its okay, because most of his subjects blamed Merlin. Actually, many of Arthur’s friends and allies are portrayed in LMd’A in complex, even self-contradictory ways, which is understandable as it drew on diverse sources. \*ETA: No pun intended. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literary-characters-who-come-to-symbolize-the-opposite-of-how-they-were-portrayed/544304.md?page=3)