GUEST POST
Irredeemable- My Top Five Villainous Protagonists
By Curtis M.
Lawson
I think the majority of readers need
a hero of some sort in their fiction. Not every protagonist needs to
be a paragon of virtue, a white knight, or a bad girl with a heart of
gold, but most readers want someone to root for. It is their hope to
travel down the familiar road of the hero’s journey and take
comfort at the worn signposts that mark the beats of the story.
People want to feel that they can,
at least in the end, count on the protagonist to do their best to
make sure the world is set right. Sure, a hero might stumble along
the way, but at the end of the day good overcomes evil, love is
stronger than hate, so on and so forth. Peter Parker always accepts
his burden of great responsibility and swings in to save the day.
While I think everyone appreciates
traveling down the comforting boulevards of the hero’s journey,
some of us occasionally want a different experience. We see the big
bad wolf lurking in the forest, and we are drawn to his dark allure.
There are signs all around, warning us not to veer from the road. The
words “HERE THERE BE MONSTERS” are scrawled across those
uncharted regions of our map. We don’t heed the warnings, and once
we step foot into those wild woods, all bets are off. A different
breed of creatures lives in that wilderness and different kinds of
stories are born there.
This is the world of the villain—the
world of the irredeemable protagonist. Unchained by the tropes and
pacing of conventional story arcs, these bad guys and gals offer some
of the wildest journeys in all of fiction. From Walter White’s
transformative journey in Breaking Bad to tales of adolescent
psychopaths roaming the streets, we are offered a brave new world
where anything is possible…except, perhaps, redemption.
As a reader and a writer, I have
always been drawn to stories like this. I find them enthralling,
unpredictable, and thought-provoking. They hold a mirror to the face
of the audience and challenge them to look at their own negative
traits. As uncomfortable as that may be, it’s as important to
understand the monster within as it is to aspire toward something
greater. I’m not a religious man, but if I were to put it in
biblical terms I would say that Christ is an aspiration, but the
devil is already in our hearts.
In celebration of the villainous and
the unique stories they offer, I present my top five irredeemable
protagonists.
#5 Wesley Gibson (Wanted)
Let me preface this first entry by
saying that I’m talking about Wesley Gibson from the Wanted
comic series, and not from the unfortunate movie adaptation. There is
an important distinction between the two, and if you only saw the
movie, I implore you to give the comic a chance. It is an altogether
different experience.
When we meet Wesley he is a down on
his luck, underachieving everyman. He is, by his own admission,
spineless and insignificant. Early into the comic, Wesley encounters
an assassin named Fox and learns that his absentee father was a
supervillain named The Killer and a key member in a secret, global
cabal.
Wesley finds that he has the same
skill set as his father—the ability to turn anything into a deadly
weapon coupled with incredible accuracy. Instead of being appalled at
his ancestry and his newfound skill at murder, he embraces it
whole-heartedly and takes his place in The Fraternity, a secret
society of supervillains that run control the entire globe.
Wanted goes on to turn the
conjoined twin tropes of the chosen one and the orphan
discovering his legacy on their heads. Wesley’s tale is a wild
inversion of the typical super-hero story, ripe with violence,
betrayal, love, lust, and hate. Like Luke Sky Walker or Harry Potter,
Wesley grows as a character over the course of the story, but unlike
them, his growth only leads him to darker and darker places.
Wanted presents a funny
mirror reflection of the hero’s journey and stretches familiar
tropes like silly putty. It’s dark, smart, and as unapologetic as
its main character. There is no moral lesson at the end and there is
no karmic justice. It’s simply a story of over the top bad people,
doing over the top bad things, in an over the top bad world.
The
best thing about the character of Wesley is how incredibly relateable
and intensely despicable he is. Most of us, at some point in our
lives, have felt trapped in a dead-end job or a passionless
relationship. Most of us have had days, weeks, or even years when we
felt like losers. We have all felt powerless and have had dark
fantasies of what we might do if our fortunes were reversed. Wesley
makes us consider if it is only a lack of power and opportunity
keeping us from the path of evil. He isn't some faceless slasher or a
nameless Auschwitz guard. He's the kid pumping your gas. He's the
part-time student at a community college. He's you reading this from
the desk at your unfulfilling job.
#4 Alex DeLarge (A Clockwork Orange)
Alex DeLarge is one of the most
iconic villains in all of film and literature. Portrayed by Malcolm
McDowell in a legendary performance, the psychopathic teenage
criminal is as charming as he is terrifying. The resident of a
near-future dystopia, Alex roams the streets with his friends,
prowling for victims to rob, rape, and kill. From gang fights and
assaults on the homeless to home invasions and all-out rape, we see
Alex tumble down a spiral of excess and violence.
Alex is as self-confident as he is
unapologetic. That youthful arrogance, mixed with his dangerous
stare, and a dash of culture and style has made him one the most
enduring villainous protagonists to ever haunt the page or screen.
Even when the roles are reversed and Alex finds himself the victim,
he shows no genuine remorse, but only a sad form of self-pity.
Depending on which version of the story you prefer (the film and the
original American printing of the book differ from the original
British version), the tale ends with Alex coming full circle, his
free will restored and him having learned nothing along the way. That
wolfish glare returns to his eyes as he tells us all we need to know.
“I was cured alright.”
#3 Walter White (Breaking Bad)
Like
Wesley Gibson, Walter White is a down on his luck everyman. Where
Wesley is a study in undeveloped potential, Walter is an examination
of squandered brilliance.
As you probably know, Walter White
was a high school chemistry teacher struggling to make ends meet for
his family, when he was given a terminal cancer diagnosis. When we
first meet Walter he is a beaten man. His posture is slumped and his
earth-tone clothes blend into the desert backdrop, making him almost
invisible. He gets no respect at work and no love from his wife. His
brother in law sees him as a joke and a wimp, and it is hinted at
that he allowed a former business partner to cheat him out of a small
fortune sometime before the events of the series.
As the shows name implies, Walter
breaks bad late in life, desperate to leave money for his family
after his cancer consigns him to oblivion. His plan? Cook and sell
crystal meth, and not just any crystal meth, but the best, purest
crystal meth anyone has ever seen. Along the way, Walter becomes the
villain that everyone wants to be—a brilliant, ruthless, and
capable bad guy who takes care of his business and his family.
What is really stunning about the
character is not just his transformation from goofy chemistry teacher
Walter White to ruthless drug kingpin Heisenberg, but the way that
these disparate aspects of his personality co-exist in a sort of
symbiotic harmony. Through the series, we see Walter express his deep
love for his children, his brother in law, and especially for his
partner in crime. In fact, it’s that love that fuels nearly every
terrible act he commits. When he starts cooking meth, it is to
provide for his family. When he lets Jesse’s girlfriend die from an
overdose it is to protect him from her influence. When he poisons a
child, it is to keep his bond to Jesse intact.
Walter’s tenderness toward his
loved ones and the timid goofiness of his everyday persona never seem
jarring when juxtaposed against the willful cruelty he shows himself
capable of. One never bats an eye as he dissolves a body in acid in
one scene then cares for his disabled son in the next. The duplicity
of his character is incredibly rich, organic, and believable.
Walter’s anger and resentment seem
justified and even righteous through the series, and the viewer can’t
help but fantasize about stepping into the role of Heisenberg to take
control of the problems in their own life. Even after Walter crosses
the line from morally gray to completely irredeemable, and as his
goals change from altruistic to egocentric, we can’t help but stay
invested in him.
#2
Patrick Bateman - American Psycho
Patrick
Bateman, the wall street sociopath of Brett Easton Ellis's
controversial American
Psycho
is perhaps the least redeemable character on this list. His excesses
are unmatched, even by Alex DeLarge and unlike Wesley Gibson or
Walter White, Patrick Bateman is no everyman gone wrong. He's broken
and vacuous from the start. He's alien and unrelatable. He's a
haunted house.
While
Bateman is a character that many would not want to follow, he manages
to pull the reader in through a combination of his strange charisma
and the promise of increasingly wild violence and perversion. These
factors coupled with the morbid intimacy of the prose, demand our
attention, if not our love.
The
duplicity of the character keeps the audience engaged, despite their
best wishes. Bateman is self-absorbed, yet possesses no real self. He
is rich and successful, but empty and unfulfilled. He appreciates the
finer things in life but equally revels in the ugliest sorts of
behavior.
Where
a story like Wanted
subverts and twists typical character arcs, American
Psycho
cuts them down with an ax. I would argue that the book and the film
barely resemble a cohesive narrative. They are more like a
haunted house carnival ride through one man’s crumbling psyche.
And
of course, the fact that Bateman is an unreliable narrator adds an
additional level of complexity. Is Bateman the psychopath he claims
to be, or is he just a broken and empty man lost in the
singularity of his own madness?
Satan (Paradise Lost)
No list of villainous leads would be
complete without the devil himself.
Milton’s Satan is seen by many
modern readers (including myself to a certain extent) to be the hero
of the epic poem Paradise Lost. This was not the intention of
the blind poet, however. In Milton’s eyes Satan was a prideful
fool, a force of corruption and, well… the devil.
What makes Satan the ultimate
villainous protagonist is that his arguments do not seem entirely
unjust to the reader, and he holds himself with dignity and pride.
He’s inspirational, passionate, and in possession of an incredible
will. Satan demonstrates nearly every attribute that the
pre-Christian heroic archetype would possess, and I don’t think
that’s by accident.
I believe that Milton intentionally
set out to demonize the ancient model of heroism by having the devil
personify that ideal, in the same manner that aspects of benevolent
pagan gods were integrated into Satan’s character in other places.
Milton sought to make the proud and ancient heroic ideal into a devil
but instead made the devil into a hero. That is a big part of the
reason that Milton’s Satan resonates with readers more than his
interpretation of Christ, and why most people only read the first
half of Paradise Lost.
All that being
said, there are still plenty of things that place Satan into the
realm of the irredeemable. First of all, Satan’s intentions are
completely driven by ego and resentment. He does not act on behalf of
his fellow angels, for the opportunity to free mankind from a
tyrannical father, or even for his own good. Everything he does is a
sacrifice at the altar of his own arrogance. These twin forces of ego
and resentment define the character. They blind and twist him, and
never is he as powerful again as in that first scene.
