Copyright
2018 by Gary L. Pullman
In horror fiction, which characters stand out and why?
The heroes of horror stories seldom come readily to mind, but the villains are memorable:
Movie or Novel
|
Villain
|
Hero
|
A Nightmare on Elm Street (movie)
|
Freddy Krueger
|
Nancy Thompson
|
Desperation (novel)
|
Tak
|
David Carver
|
Frankenstein
(novel)
|
Monster
|
Dr. Victor Frankenstein
|
Halloween (movie)
|
Michael Myers
|
Laurie Strode
|
Paradise Lost (poem)
|
Satan
|
God
|
Psycho (movie)
|
Norman Bates
|
Lila Crane and Sam Loomis
|
The Silence of the Lambs (movie)
|
Hannibal Lecter
|
Clarice Starling
|
Horror
stories belong to the villains, even though they are often overcome
by the hero or heroes at the end of the novel or movie in which they
are featured. The villains make things happen; the heroes, until the
end (and sometimes even then) mostly react. This observation applies
to literature as old as John Milton's Paradise Lost,
for which, both William
Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley contend, Satan is the true hero of the
epic, a point of view I address in my urban fantasy novel, A Whole World Full of Hurt. The
protagonist, Raven Westbrook, a turncoat witch, is discussing God's
seeming indifference to the evils she and her rescuer, government
agent Lloyd Edwards:
“One of the things I remember about reading the poem . . . is that the accepted criticism of the day regarded Satan as the true hero of the poem. He was made unforgettable, these critic claimed, while God was given such short shrift that he was, at best, a marginal character.”
“That's
the way it seems today, too, sometimes. God keeps a low profile.”
“I
said God seemed all the more impressive to me because he didn't
appear directly in the epic. Readers heard allusions of God, in the
dialogue of other, lesser characters, but God himself, as you put it,
seemed to keep a low profile, as if he himself needn't deign to
confront the evil that Satan represented.”
Raven
considered his words. “Wow. I get that. What did the professor
say?”
Lloyd
chuckled. “I don't think he knew what to say, really. He didn't
expect any thinking outside the box of received criticism. He
admitted the possibility of such a point of view and, without
endorsing it, moved on to the next point.”
On a deeper level, characters the likes of Freddy Kruger, Tak, Frankenstein's monster, Michael Myers, Satan, Norman Bates, and Hannibal Lecter allow us, vicariously, to see life through their eyes, to become them, in our imaginations, for a time, doing what they do. Except for sociopaths, readers and moviegoers have the capacities to empathize and sympathize, to walk a mile in another person's shoes, to get inside someone else's head, to identify with even the most vile and disgusting, heartless, cruel, and evil villains without, we hope, becoming them ourselves, although Friedrich Nietzsche, suggested we may endanger ourselves by such actions: “when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
Memorable villains are Evil, with a capital “E.” There is nothing, or very little, they will not do in the interests of obtaining their own goals, whether they seek another victim, victory of God, the creation of life itself, or escape from themselves through their adoption of another personality. Because of the magnitude of their evil, as it is represented in the horrible deeds they commit, they stand out.
Finally, there is at least one other reason that such characters attain prominence: their hubris, or excessive pride, the extreme arrogance which results from their unwarranted self-regard and the self-egoistic centering of the universe upon themselves. All that matters to them are their own desires. They who are merely men (or, far less often, women) would be gods. This is the basic motivation of all bigger-than-life villains. It is the sin of Adam and Eve. As Satan tells the first couple, concerning God's prohibition of their eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God had but the fruit of the tree off limits because “God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). It is the sin that leads to Lucifer's downfall:
For
thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will
exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the
mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:/ I will ascend
above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High./ Yet
thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit (Isaiah
14:14-16).
It is the sin, too, of Freddy Kruger, Tak, Frankenstein's monster, Michael Myers, Satan, Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter, and the other prominent villains of horror fiction. It may also the sin of such actual villains as Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Ghadafi, and other serial killers and dictators. Herein lies the true horror and terror of the most prominent villains, both of fiction and of history.