Books where protagonist is the most morally vile character

[Ran]

Angus is indeed a point of view. Nick Succorso is hardly better. 

Angus is put through a torturous arc that leads to his becoming a protagonist, but I'm not sure if he's ever redeemed as such, though maybe he finds a little grace here and there. However, he is instrumental in saving the human race from being absorbed by an alien hive min as well as from a predatory mega-CEO. 

[karaddin]

Yeah, that's what I thought I remembered. But he's not crossing that line until later books so the first 2-3 should apply right?

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Yeah, that's what I thought I remembered. But he's not crossing that line until later books so the first 2-3 should apply right?

Yeah. It is a very long and ugly road.

[LongRider]

evil female protagonist?   Annie Wilkes from Steven King's Misery, perhaps?  She was pretty awful.

[Annara Snow]

On 8/2/2021 at 9:02 AM, john said:

This thread reminds me how good Lolita is. HH is not a psychopath, a sociopath or a master criminal, all of whom are fun to read about. He’s not a man struggling with the consequences of evil acts or a wrong thinking teenager like Alex from Clockwork Orange. He’s just a pathetic pedophile.

But it’s so well written that he’s still fun to read because he has such an entertaining inner monologue. And the book really has two villain protagonists since, problematically perhaps, Lolita’s victimhood is barely taken into account. It’s as much a story about a sad middle aged man driven crazy by a devious 13 year old as anything.

No, it's really not. You seem to fully swallowing Unreliable Narrator Humbert Humbert's twisted logic and explanations. In his head, Dolores and other 12 year old girls are "nymphettes" driving him crazy, when it's obvious to anyone with any objectivity that she's his victim (and he ruins her life) and he is a pathetic, self-justifying child abuser. 

On the topic: I haven't looked through all the pages of this thread. Has anyone mentioned Notes from Underground?

Also, Macbeth. He seems a bit less awful than his wife at first, but then he quickly loses it and turns into a complete monster to the point even she is shocked to witness his state of mind, behavior and actions.

[Annara Snow]

2 hours ago, LongRider said:

evil female protagonist?   Annie Wilkes from Steven King's Misery, perhaps?  She was pretty awful.

She is not the protagonist, she is the main antagonist. The writer she kidnaps is the narrator, first person POV protagonist.

[Annara Snow]

On 11/16/2021 at 10:09 PM, Zorral said:

Nah.  Again we are prompted into sympathy by the guilt and remorse.

Macbeth only feels genuine remorse at first. Thenthe guilt just make him lose all hope and decide that it would be easier to just continue being terrible than trying to come back from it and try to be better, so he gets worse and worse and does more and more drastic actions to eliminate every threat to his power and life.

We do feel sympathy, but he still the most morally vile person in the play, and the only one who rivals him is his wife, who starts off seeming to have no guilt but then goes insane out of guilt in the end, just as he's  busy becoming more of a monster.

[john]

36 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

No, it's really not. You seem to fully swallowing Unreliable Narrator Humbert Humbert's twisted logic and explanations. In his head, Dolores and other 12 year old girls are "nymphettes" driving him crazy, when it's obvious to anyone with any objectivity that she's his victim (and he ruins her life) and he is a pathetic, self-justifying child abuser. 

No, I just understood the book correctly. I mean, I make a point about Nabokov failing to take her victimhood into account which you counter with ‘unreliable narrator.’ Yeah, funnily enough Nabokov wrote the unreliable narration.

You start off with an incorrect assumption that Dolores belongs with the other nymphettes who sexually frustrate HH, she doesn’t, she’s a special case. She literally drives him crazy, she does it with her wiles, she sets out to hurt him. He probably ruins her life, the book certainly isn’t clear on that even using objectivity to penetrate the vast mysteries of the unreliable narrator. She definitely ruins his life. The notion that Nabokov is entirely sympathetic towards Lolita is wrong. He could have written it like that but he didn’t.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

No, it's really not. You seem to fully swallowing Unreliable Narrator Humbert Humbert's twisted logic and explanations. In his head, Dolores and other 12 year old girls are "nymphettes" driving him crazy, when it's obvious to anyone with any objectivity that she's his victim (and he ruins her life) and he is a pathetic, self-justifying child abuser. 

On the topic: I haven't looked through all the pages of this thread. Has anyone mentioned Notes from Underground?

Also, Macbeth. He seems a bit less awful than his wife at first, but then he quickly loses it and turns into a complete monster to the point even she is shocked to witness his state of mind, behavior and actions.

 

On 8/3/2021 at 7:54 PM, Lermo T.I. Krrrammpus said:

I don't think Blood Meridian fits the OP, the kid is the protagonist and total shit but most other characters are much worse.

Someone mentioned The Boys and Homelander, but I can't see how he's a protagonist, and defintely not the protagonist.  

For some older stuff, the Under Ground Man and MacBeth.

See also, Love in the Time of Cholera.  

 

The following spoiler is an Iain Banks book:

  Reveal hidden contents

Banks Use of Weapons.  Although maybe there is an argument to be made (I'd argue against it though) that all the drones who know who Zakalwe really is are even worse.

 

 

 

I tried to mention  Notes From the Underground but used a poor nickname for the narrator.

Eta: *and MacBeth!  great minds!  I think Richard III fits here too

[Annara Snow]

17 minutes ago, john said:

No, I just understood the book correctly. I mean, I make a point about Nabokov failing to take her victimhood into account which you counter with ‘unreliable narrator.’ Yeah, funnily enough Nabokov wrote the unreliable narration.

You start off with an incorrect assumption that Dolores belongs with the other nymphettes who sexually frustrate HH, she doesn’t, she’s a special case. She literally drives him crazy, she does it with her wiles, she sets out to hurt him. He probably ruins her life, the book certainly isn’t clear on that even using objectivity to penetrate the vast mysteries of the unreliable narrator. She definitely ruins his life. The notion that Nabokov is entirely sympathetic towards Lolita is wrong. He could have written it like that but he didn’t.

I don't think you understand the concept of Unreliable Narrator at all.

[Annara Snow]

11 hours ago, Lermo T.I. Krrrammpus said:

 

I tried to mention  Notes From the Underground but used a poor nickname for the narrator.

Eta: *and MacBeth!  great minds!  I think Richard III fits here too

Oh yes, definitely. I just didn't mention him because Shakespeare's Richard III was mentioned on the first page, I think. Typical Villain Protagonist.

[john]

12 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

I don't think you understand the concept of Unreliable Narrator at all.

Unreliable narrator is not an screen the author erects so you can make the book be about whatever you want. It’s a tool to draw the readers attention to something outside the stated narrative. In this case it’s used almost exclusively to comedically highlight Humbert’s pathetic and pitiful nature in the face of his attestations of brilliance. Dolores is neglected.

This is not an obscure opinion, it’s a common reaction to Lolita, that Nabokov fails to delve into the inner life of Dolores, preferring to emphasise the deviousness, cruelty and sexual promiscuity of Lolita.

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, john said:

she does it with her wiles, she sets out to hurt him.

Her wiles???????? She ruins his effin' life?

Did you not notice who kidnapped whom for sexual gratification?

" ... the deviousness, cruelty and sexual promiscuity of Lolita." ????????"  Readers who go for that reading are -- well, nobody I want to have around me.

[Annara Snow]

3 hours ago, john said:

Unreliable narrator is not an screen the author erects so you can make the book be about whatever you want. It’s a tool to draw the readers attention to something outside the stated narrative. In this case it’s used almost exclusively to comedically highlight Humbert’s pathetic and pitiful nature in the face of his attestations of brilliance. Dolores is neglected.

This is not an obscure opinion, it’s a common reaction to Lolita, that Nabokov fails to delve into the inner life of Dolores, preferring to emphasise the deviousness, cruelty and sexual promiscuity of Lolita.

The fact that you talk about "deviousness" and "cruelty" of Dolores or mention 'sexual promiscuity" (what promiscuity, BTW? She just had sex with one boy at a summer camp before Humbert, but oh, of course he thinks that the fact she wasn't a virgin when he abused her is so super important!) as a terrible trait of hers, or that you unironically write that she "drove Humbert crazy" or call her a villain, shows very obviously that you really don't understand the concept of Unreliable Narrator. You keep accepting Humbert's skewed views of Dolores as objectively true, no matter how bizarre they are and how obviously they clash with the objective reality. And the objective reality is qutie obvious from the facts Humbert includes in his narration.*

I truly hope that it is not a "common reaction to Lolita", as that would considerably lower my opinion of the human race.

*

Spoiler

One paragraph that I remember making me laugh with how detached from reality Humbert is, is the one where he describes Dolores' "perfect measurements" - which are that of a not very tall, skinny pre-teen who's barely entering puberty. But this is the man who calls every adult woman "fat", repeatedly says all girls get "fat and disgusting" around the age of 15, and calls girls aged 12-15 "nymphettes", as if they are seductresses and he is just a poor victim of their wiles adult. It is obvious all the way through that Dolores was an ordinary 12 year old kid who didn't have a father figure in her life so she was drawn to older men, and that Humbert is a pedophile child abuser who ruined her life. He initially courts and seduces her mother just to have access to her, indirectly ends up causing her mother's death, doesn't tell her about it when he has ""consensual" sex with her the first time (not really consensual because she is 12), and  then he positions himself as her "father"/guardian , to bind her to him, because she doesn't have anyone anymore and is completely dependent on him, and the second part of the novel makes it really clear that she's trapped and unhappy and would love nothing more than to get away from him (even the faint pretext of "consesuality" with a 12 year old child falls apart in the second part of the book). And when she does, her life never gets any better, because she can only repeat unhealthy patterns that Humbert set for her with their relationship.

 

[john]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Her wiles???????? She ruins his effin' life?

Did you not notice who kidnapped whom for sexual gratification?

" ... the deviousness, cruelty and sexual promiscuity of Lolita." ????????"  Readers who go for that reading are -- well, nobody I want to have around me.

You’re reading it wrong.

36 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

The fact that you talk about "deviousness" and "cruelty" of Dolores or mention 'sexual promiscuity"

Not Dolores. Lolita. Dolores is a real person, Lolita is somebody Humbert makes up. Humbert, and by extension Nabokov, doesn’t care about Dolores.

42 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

shows very obviously that you really don't understand the concept of Unreliable Narrator.

Your responses show very obviously that you don’t understand the concept of fiction. There is no ‘objective reality,’ there’s only what was written. Obviously a thirteen year old abuse victim can only be a victim and never a villain but the character Lolita in Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita can be and is.

[Rippounet]

On 8/2/2021 at 9:02 AM, john said:

But it’s so well written that he’s still fun to read because he has such an entertaining inner monologue. And the book really has two villain protagonists since, problematically perhaps, Lolita’s victimhood is barely taken into account. It’s as much a story about a sad middle aged man driven crazy by a devious 13 year old as anything.

Quote

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country, that, by then, in retrospect, was no more than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires and her sobs in the night—every night, every night—the moment I feigned sleep.
Part 2, Chapter 3

Nabokov's main project in writing Lolita was to assert the power of literature. In other words, the narrator's objective is to fool the reader. There are actually many clues as to Lolita's victimhood, but there are well hidden enough that you don't necessarily notice them on the first read (or even the second). It takes careful study to see how Nabokov did it ; it's quite clever.

[john]

So clever. And yet someone (Zorral I think) already spotted and referenced that a few pages and several months back.

But yes, that one brief line is a good example of how the book barely takes her victimhood into account.

[Rippounet]

7 minutes ago, john said:

But yes, that one brief line is a good example of how the book barely takes her victimhood into account.

Oh, there's many more, spread throughout the book ; the sobbing quote is the most iconic, because Nabokov's wife herself pointed it out at some point. From the first rape "she was not quite prepared for the difference betweeen a kid's life and mine" that makes her bleed for some time, to the end "you only destroyed my life" and the "her cries would never be amongst those of other children" (or something like that, I'm quoting this from memory).
The entire second part is a succession of horrors: HH prevents her from seeing friends and having a social life, he pays her for sex and then steals the money back, he even rapes her in her school... etc.
I used to have a list of all these quotes, and used to know them all by heart.
I won't blame anyone for not having spotted them all (I had a teacher to help, and a good bibliography), but I don't think you want to insist.

 

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, john said:

You’re reading it wrong.

You are the one who chose the words, words such as wiles, promiscuous, etc.

[john]

18 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Oh, there's many more, spread throughout the book ; the sobbing quote is the most iconic, because Nabokov's wife herself pointed it out at some point. From the first rape "she was not quite prepared for the difference betweeen a kid's life and mine" that makes her bleed for some time, to the end "you only destroyed my life" and the "her cries would never be amongst those of other children" (or something like that, I'm quoting this from memory).
The entire second part is a succession of horrors: HH prevents her from seeing friends and having a social life, he pays her for sex and then steals the money back, he even rapes her in her school... etc.
I used to have a list of all these quotes, and used to know them all by heart.
I won't blame anyone for not having spotted them all (I had a teacher to help, and a good bibliography), but I don't think you want to insist.

 

You don’t think the necessity of a teacher, a reference manual and years of contemplation indicate that this aspect of the novel isn’t that well developed?  

You’re right I don’t want to insist on trawling Lolita for references to Dolores’ thoughts and feelings, I think that would be tedious and fruitless. Better to look at the multitude of literary criticism that says the same thing, that there isn’t much there. Nabokov did try to slip Humbert’s narrative leash a few times (literally a few times) but I don’t think he did it adequately to establish her as a thinking, feeling character. That wasn’t his purpose.

One quote you reference here - “He broke my heart. You only broke my life” - is not helpful. That is Humbert’s inner monologue, he’s imagining her response. And I don’t care about his recriminations, I want to hear from Dolores.

The rest of it seems to be listing plot points, which of course I’m aware of. The fact that she was abused and is a victim doesn’t explain how Nabokov takes that into account in establishing her character and separating Dolores from the Lolita caricature in Humbert’s solipsistic account.

16 hours ago, Zorral said:

You are the one who chose the words, words such as wiles, promiscuous, etc.

Because I’m describing her as she’s characterised in the book. That’s Lolita, the fantasy he constructs. That’s what we get, Dolores doesn’t have her own voice, we can certainly reject Humbert’s interpretation but there isn’t much to put in its place.