Greetings and salutations. It is I , Graham. I’m writing this one in advance. At the time of posting, it will be two days after I have had major surgery. Hopefully I survived. I’m sure I did just fine. But regardless, today we are continuing our discussion on villains. In particular, it is time to leave the Silver Screen, and discuss villains from literature. I had to think about this one for a little while. Clevenger and I discussed this, and decided that it was alright to include literary villains that later received a TV or movie iteration. After all, there are likely very few worthy villains that never received some type of visual remake. Many of the villains from books tend to be rather boring, if I am honest. Too many authors go with the “less is more” mentality, so that you spend the entire book with the protagonist, and get very little screen time with villain, with them usually restricted to times they go head to head with the hero. You see very little of their motivation, unless they monologue, and even less of their backstory. Fantasy has a tendency of taking it further, and using the amorphous Dark Lord as the villain. There is very little that is interesting about a vague Dark Lord, except for perhaps some decent visuals. Science fiction can sometimes make it worse, making nature and physics the enemy, with the story about pure survival. The Martian is a great example of this, where there was no real villain. However, there are other literary villains that are worth contemplating. In the end there were two that I wanted to discuss. The first comes from my favorite classic, Long John Silver, from Treasure Island. To me, he is the quintessential example of a villain running into just the right person to open his heart and begin him on a redemption arc. He’s a bad guy. He lies, cheats, and steals. He leads a crew of actual pirates, who worked under an even worse pirate. He was not a good person. But then he worked alongside Jim Hawkins. LJS was simply playing a part, leading his crew in biding their time until they could take what they wanted. There was never any intention of ever changing. But then Jim started using Silver as a father figure. Silver, in playing his part, had little choice but to take up the part. It softened Silver, whether he wanted it or not. Jim was too pure, and Silver was too into his role. By the time he flipped his mutiny, he just couldn’t bring himself to fully betray Jim, even though it cost him his crew and his treasure. The juxtaposition of the ruthless pirate with the heart of gold that Jim Hawkins accidentally uncovers makes Long John Silver a fascinating character for me. The second villain is one that I am loath to discuss, even as I find them fascinating. The reason is, as much as I love hating this particular character, I have lost all shred of respect I ever had for the creator. As much as I don’t want to give up any credit to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the character of Delores Umbridge was an amazing villain. She was intelligent, resourceful, charismatic, and determined, among many other strong attributes she possessed. She is also psychopathic, by the actual clinical definition. Psychopathic individuals are noted for superficial charm, puffed up self esteem, deceitfulness, shallow emotions, manipulative, narcissistic, non-empathetic, and exploitative. Sound familiar? Umbridge worked as a villain because she was an exaggeration of someone every one of us have known. She is the teacher making fun of a student for a stutter or an inability to pay attention. She is the PE coach that bullies the overweight kid. She is the petty boss that finds every tiny excuse to make your job miserable, just so she can see you struggle. She is the coworker that steals credit for your work, and undermines you in conversations with superiors, just so she can look better by comparison. She is all of these, just dialed up to 11. There is almost a type of purity to her pettiness and vindictiveness. She is the train wreck that you know could have been avoided, if only someone hadn’t chained the crossing guards into their upright positions.

So there you have it. This time around I went with two favorites, rather than one, each for their own reasons. One for losing his purity of purpose for the better. The other, for keeping hers, even when it sent her down with the ship. Stick around for next week, when we get into part three. Until then…

Don’t forget to love one another. Graham.