# Stories with a Villain as Protagonist **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 29, 2008, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976 "2008-05-29T02:40:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/41 "2008-05-29T16:58:11Z")
All Irvine Welsh’s protagonists are seriously flawed. But the one in “Filth” is clearly meant to be a villain, with every unpleasant attribute he could invisage (a corrupt, racist, Hearts-supporting\*, anti-Catholic, masonic, police officer, who likes Hair Metal). - – Hearts are the other football team in Edinburgh, arch rivals to Hiberian, Irvine Welsh’s team. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/42 "2008-05-29T17:14:26Z")
[The Hitcher](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091209/) qualifies, if you buy the interpretation that John Ryder is just a figment of the main character’s imagination, and that the main character is really the one doing all the killing. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/43 "2008-05-29T17:16:11Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] Can’t believe no one’s mentioned the _Dexter_ books, yet. [/QUOTE] He seems almost a textbook case of anti-hero. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/44 "2008-05-29T17:18:02Z")
In _Dangerous Liaisons,_ both the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont are villainous, and unquestionably the protagonists; all the other main characters are dupes. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/45 "2008-05-29T17:21:47Z")
[_Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer._](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry:_Portrait_Of_A_Serial_Killer) 'Nuff said. But it is debatable whether the criminal protagonists of crime-stories-from-the-criminal’s-POV, of which there are countless examples, are really **villains** for purposes of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/46 "2008-05-29T17:30:10Z")
[the Godfather](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/) and sequels. [the Sopranos](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141842/). Michael Corleone (and Don Vito as well) & Tony Soprano are both presented as sympathetic, understandable characters. But make no mistake, they are both unrepentantly evil. ---
**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:** [May 29, 2008, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/47 "2008-05-29T17:33:32Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] In Roald Dahl’s story, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” the protagonist is a murderer and at least slightly psychotic. [/QUOTE] The protagonist is pregnant and holding a frozen leg of lamb when her cop husband comes home and tells her that he is leaving her for his mistress. She acts instinctively by conking him on the head. Realizing his cop buddies would not buy her story of how it happened, she is smart enough to cover up her crime beautifully. It was a crime of passion fueled by pregnancy hormones. OTOH, the protagonist in Stephen King’s story “Survivor Type” is such a villan that he got what was coming to him. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/48 "2008-05-29T17:39:19Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] All of the works of Tim Dorsey. His protagonist, [Serge A. Storms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_A._Storms), is a serial killer and complete nutjob. For that matter, Flashman might qualify. He’s hardly a hero. [/QUOTE] Flashy definitely counts. Don’t forget he was explicitly the villain in _Tom Brown’s School Days_ before George Macdonald Fraser got hold of him, and Fraser didn’t clean him up at all. Flashy isn’t an antihero or a loveable rogue. He’s a genunely bad person throughout the series (which is brilliant, by the way). I love Tim Dorsey’s Serge novels, incidentally, but I’m not sure Serge is really a villain. He’s a serial killer, yes, but he only kills extreme assholes and he frequently acts in defense of victims. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/49 "2008-05-29T17:41:52Z")
Though actually thinking about it surely if your protagonist is a villian then by definition he is an Anti-Hero ? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/50 "2008-05-29T17:56:41Z")
[QUOTE=griffin1977] Though actually thinking about it surely if your protagonist is a villian then by definition he is an Anti-Hero ? [/QUOTE] Maybe I’m making too pedantic a distinction, but I think there’s a difference between an anti-hero and a villain. An antihero is a protagonist who may have some traditionally “villainous” qualities but is still essentially sympathetic to the audience and even “good” in some ways. Protagonists who are genuine villains (they are actually evil characters, not just rough-hewn, or “roguish,” or dark) who the audience should _not_ feel sympathetic to. In Patricia Highsmith’s novels, for example, Ripley is a genuinely evil, sociopathic character. The same is true of Nabokov’s Humbert (Nabokov used the theme of a self-justifying, villainous narrator more than once). I think of “antiheroes” as characters like Han Solo or Snake Pliskin – bad on the outside but good on the inside. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/51 "2008-05-29T17:58:02Z")
[QUOTE=griffin1977] Though actually thinking about it surely if your protagonist is a villian then by definition he is an Anti-Hero ? [/QUOTE] An [anti-hero](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero) is unheroic but not necessarily villainous. ---
**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:** [May 29, 2008, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/52 "2008-05-29T18:00:34Z")
Andrew Vachss’s Burke is the perfect antihero: He lives outside society, off the radar, hangs out with thugs, gets paid in cash, kills (evil) people and has total contempt for the system. BUT he is the leader in the fight against child molesters, which means he is not a villain. ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/53 "2008-05-29T18:03:23Z")
Any of the characters in **The Grifters** would qualify. ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/54 "2008-05-29T20:33:10Z")
[QUOTE=TV time] In books: The _Hit Man_ and follow up books. _The Burgler Who…_" series - well, he is a burgler, I don’t really see him as a villain though. [/QUOTE] These two, especially the Burglar ones, seem perhaps more anti-heroic to me, since Block really makes a point of the protagonists having their principles. But Block has a much darker standalone, _Random Walk_, that I believe truly fills the villainous bill. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/55 "2008-05-29T20:56:32Z")
What about the Parker books by “Richard Stark” (Donald Westlake)? Parker is a professional armed robber, pretty much only motivated by money - I reckon he counts as a villain. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/56 "2008-05-29T21:02:43Z")
Steerpike, from the _Gormenghast_ series: he initiates and drives all the action in his attempt to subvert and overthrow the archaic, suffocating status quo of the castle. He becomes truly monstrous in his willingness to do anything to achieve his goals - murder, arson, driving people insane - and yet he’s always attractive in his villainy, in both his ruthless ingenuity and that he’s the only one in Gormenghast who dares to challenge the stultifying order of things. My favourite villain ever. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/57 "2008-05-29T22:55:13Z")
The protagonist in Iain M Banks’ [Consider Phlebas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas) is an enemy of The Culture. Whichever way you look on that entity (interventionist hippies with weapons of mass destruction) the blurb for the book is that the Idirans (whom the protagonist works for) are fighting for their faith whereas the Culture is fighting for its moral right to exist. A later book in his SF series, [Look to Windward](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_to_Windward), follows on somewhat from that book and again has a villain (slightly sympathetically portrayed) as protagonist. ---
**Author:** ![Sassy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@Sassy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sassy)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/58 "2008-05-29T23:06:38Z")
Francis Iles \*Malice Aforethought \* - It involves a physician who slowly poisons his domineering wife so he may be with the woman he loves. An early and prominent example of the inverted detective story. This novel reveals the murderer’s identity in the first line of the story and grants the reader insight into the workings of a criminal mind as his criminal plans progress. ---
**Author:** ![priapus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@priapus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/priapus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/59 "2008-05-29T23:13:44Z")
I can’t believe no one has mentioned James Cagney in White Heat.He’s a mother loving crazed killer,but I always find myself rooting for him.I’m not sure why.Maybe because he’s more of force of nature than human. Would Peter Lorre qualify in M?Or Fu Manchu? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976/60 "2008-05-29T23:21:54Z")
Let’s not forget _Vanity Fair_. Becky Sharp makes Scarlett O’Hara look like Mother Teresa. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-with-a-villain-as-protagonist/450976.md?page=4)