Oooh, good call.
Aaron the Moor is a little hard to take seriously. I mean, he’s kind of cartoonish. I dunno, I just don’t think that he’s as evil as Iago. Neither do I think Edmund is as evil as Iago, though he’s close. Goneril and Regan deserve mention too.
I could make a sarcastic aside that Titus isn’t literature in the grandiose sense of the word, no matter who wrote it.
good idea that won’t come to fruition because this is the internet and we are all oh-so lazy.
Q from STAR TREK is willing to destroy whole planets for petty revenge or his own amusement. While it’s unknown if he ever actually did this, there was an episode where he was stripped of his powers and upon getting them back he was stopped just short of taking revenge on the star system whose people tormented him when he was powerless.
It’s actually Blood Meridian. And Judge Holden wins for me, hands down. He delights in misleading men, sometimes at the expense of their very souls. His only enemy is the one man, The Kid, who he could not persuade.
Oh god, I just finished Wuthering Heights a short bit ago, and I cannot agree more. What gets me is that it’s billed as a “great love story”. And that Heathcliff is supposed to be this Byronic hero, a dark, handsome lover. When he’s actually anything but.
What about Victor Frankenstein? He gets it into his head to create a new being, and once he does, he’s disgusted by what he’s done, and simply abandons his creation, letting the creature fend for himself. The creature, searching only to find a friend yet rejected at every attempt, begins to seek out his creator.
While the creature does become violent in his attempts to gain friendship, it could be argued that it was Victor’s responsibility to teach him and guide him, rather than abandoning the creator to his fate. And yet, he never accepts his own part in this.
Simon Legree literally whipped Uncle Tom to death. Plus, he has a truly evil-sounding name.
He gets a kid & dumps him.
Same thing happens in every major American city 50+ times a day.
Of course, in those cases, less graverobbing involved…
Alan, from Spider Robinson’s novel Very Bad Deaths. A nerdy computer genius serial killer who happens to enjoy finding out how long and how intensely people can be made to suffer before he kills them. The things I read in that book STILL freak me out at night.
Good one. Mox Mox the Manburner was another depraved bastard created by McMurtry in Streets of Laredo. Come to think of it, Joey Garza was no peach either.
Okay, it’s been a long time since I read Rebecca, but I don’t remember Mrs. Danvers doing anything especially evil. She just treated the heroine like shit.
On “The Pillars of the Earth” (Ken Follet), William Hamleigh starts as an evil character, and gets progressively worse throughout the book.
That little game she played with the costume?
What about Evil Roy Slade? I mean, his first name is Evil and all.
Inciting the heroine to suicide? Burning down Manderley? Oh, yeah. She was eeeeeeeeeevil.
I think we *should *only count human characters. Guys like Satan and satan-analogues like Morgoth are supposed to be the most evil thing ever. They have no choice to be evil, it’s their nature. The way I figure, one cannot be evil without the capacity for doing good. It’s knowing the difference between good and evil and deliberately doing evil that matters. Without a frame of reference, morality has no real meaning.
That being said, I’m not sure if I can answer the OP. I could nominate my favorite villain (s) but I can’t really decide if any of them are the most evil of all.
Which makes him not so much an evil bastard, just a deadbeat dad. An asshole to be sure, but no different than any jackass that knocks his girlfriend/wife up and up and leaves. Which makes the story way more sad than horrible. Because the Monster isn’t a monster, he’s a kid. With all the restraint and cruelty of a small child, but the strength of a strong man and perfectly innocent. He’s like Lennie from Of Mice and Men. I’ve always found the story to be heartbreaking than anything.
Intereseting if you look at this thread from the main page it says:
The most evil fictional character in history is
Skald the Rhymer
Now I’m not one to normally jump to conclusions or anything, but the proof is right there in the pudding.
Or at least very close to the pudding.
Satan as fictional character, e.g., from Paradise Lost.
Well, according to the Hilda Sharp Theory of Universe Construction, there is a world somewhere where this is accurate.
Hell, Satan from PL is often sympathetic. Though not to the degree as, say, Judas Iscariot in Jesus Christ Superstar, who is about equally sympathetic as Jesus, and perhaps more tragic.