/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4432495]

/lit/ please recommend me some books where the protagonist is evil, a villain.

[Anonymous No.4432499]

Isn't that a contradiction

[Anonymous No.4432507]

>>4432499

Protagonist is simply the main character. The antagonist is the person or thing that stands in the way of the protagonist's goals.

How about Clockwork Orange?

[Anonymous No.4432515]

>reading stories where the characters can be easily pigeonholed into moral standpoints

[Anonymous No.4432520]

Can I recommend the Monk or no

[Anonymous No.4432530]

the ultimate

[Anonymous No.4432531]

[Anonymous No.4432532]

Crime and Punishment

[Anonymous No.4432537]

>>4432530
More interestingly, are there any books where the protagonist is evil, but described as the hero?

[Anonymous No.4432538]

>>4432537
lo-lee-ta

[Anonymous No.4432587]

>>4432531
You know that was because of a bug right

[Anonymous No.4432599]

>>4432531
Do we really have such people on /lit?

[Anonymous No.4432616]

Beowolf

[Anonymous No.4432787]

>>4432495
die ponyfucking scum

[Anonymous No.4432844]

Not the OP, but I'm highly intrigued by this concept

Just think about it, most literature published is all about heroes and anti-heroes and how they save the world, even if it's a pile of steaming shit nobody cares about. I for one would like to see the "villain" triumph more. So what if someone makes the world he lives in a little bit darker in exchange for personal gain or vengeance? That's what real life is all about, I mean, just look around.

Oh I also want to see the fruit of this story. The villain enjoying the riches he/she aquired, finally being able to afford things they couldn't before, or getting the revenge they so hungered for. And thoroughly enjoying said things to the fullest, no morality bullshit.
And most importantly, they shouldn't be condemned at all by the author. They should be coming from a bad,bad place (abandonment, poverty, etc) so the audience can see the reasons WHY they act this way, so they're able to sympathise on some level.

[Anonymous No.4432847]

>>4432538
You would really call Humberto evil?

[Anonymous No.4432849]

>>4432847
lol

[Anonymous No.4432852]

>>4432495
Sabbath's Theater

[Anonymous No.4432859]

American Psycho

[Anonymous No.4432864]

>>4432616
How so

[Anonymous No.4432930]

>>4432844
wow
I think youre on to something

[Anonymous No.4432948]

>>4432930
lol are you 12?

[Anonymous No.4432956]

>>4432844
oh man i dont think this has ever been done before

[Anonymous No.4432970]

>>4432948
no. you?

[Anonymous No.4432978]

>>4432538

HH aint evil. Not even close. Maybe he could be regarded as a villain, depending on how you choose to define that term.

[Anonymous No.4433711]

>>4432847
yes.if molesting little girls is not enough, planning to get said little girl pregnant so you can molest your own daughter is definitely the fruit of an evil mind.

[Anonymous No.4433724]

Antiheroes are so overdone. The Byronic man is where it's at, OP.

[Anonymous No.4433737]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Anonymous No.4433739]

>>4432507
Clockwork Orange was ridiculous, Alex is portrayed as a destructive sociopath lunatic and in the end he suddenly wants to settle down and tenderly raise a family.

[Anonymous No.4433756]

>>4432864
Blonde douche bag that kills everything with his douche baggery bags.

[Anonymous No.4433766]

>>4433739
So?

[Anonymous No.4433794]

>>4432495
The Great Gatsby.

/thread
If you haven't caught onto the fact that Gatsby is a bad guy you probably should leave this board

[Anonymous No.4433797]

>>4433766

Kubrick Orange > Burgess Orange

[Anonymous No.4433796]

>>4433794
Gatsby is not the protagonist.

[Anonymous No.4433805]

>>4433796
Gatsby is the protagonist. He's the lead role. It's ALL about him, told from the standpoint of Nick.

[Anonymous No.4433807]

>>4433796

He most certainly is. Nick is the narrator, not the protagonist in any way.

[Anonymous No.4433812]

>>4433805
Oh yeah, I watched the movie too.

[Anonymous No.4433829]

>>4433807
Thanks for agreeing with me.
>>4433812
Tell me how nick is the hero then?
What conflict does nick go through?
what great achievement does nick make?
what does nick overcome?
He doesn't! Nick doesn't do shit.

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4433832]

>>4432495
>>4432537
Atlas Shrug, of course

[Anonymous No.4433836]

>>4433832
Sorry butterfly, but you're wrong and stupid as usual

[Anonymous No.4433847]

>>4433829
The book is about daisy as much as it is about Gatsby. Nick changes throughout the whole book, via his relationships with Gatsby, Jordan, and his cousins family. His lack of action is what changes the story more than his actions (not telling daisy about Tom's affair, etc.). He is more observant than outgoing, sure, but that doesn't make him any less a protagonist.

[Anonymous No.4433848]

>>4432844
Atlas Shrugged?

[Anonymous No.4433852]

>>4433829
>Creative Writing 101
toppy lul

[Anonymous No.4433858]

>>4433847
That's wrong. Completely wrong.

please, in two sentences or less tell me your synopsis of the book, and maybe we can work this out in a polite and considerate manner.

[Anonymous No.4433862]

>>4433852
What does that have to do with my post?

[Anonymous No.4433864]

>>4433858
It is a commentary on the immoral (if not just different) ways of the upper class as viewed by the middle class. This is sentence two.

[Anonymous No.4433872]

>>4432495
Like superheroes?
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, Sinner by Greg Stolze.
Outside of that, I guess the Dexter books, but I haven't read those. Parts of the Hannibal series are with Hannibal as the focus character, moreso in Hannibal and entirely in Hannibal Rising.

[Anonymous No.4433880]

>>4433864
Okay, I can work with that.

Gatsby IS the immoral rich though, while nick is the eyeglass of the middle class that we see Jay through.

Nick is the middle class as a whole. He's practically the only dude in the novel who isn't filthy fucking loaded. Whenever Nick writes (because he's the implied writer) about anything that isn't directly gatsby, it's something to set the scene for gatsby.

[Anonymous No.4433882]

How have we gotten this far and no one has mentioned Maldoror

[Anonymous No.4433914]

>>4433880
I would argue that Gatsby is the more static of the two. He is obsessed with Daisy, then he and Daisy start doing the horizontal mambo and he still only exists to be obsessed with her, then he dies. Nick begins as a simple and man who moves to the city and becomes almost ruined by it; he becomes involved with criminals and liars, suffers the death of innocence, and undergoes the trauma of losing one of his best and only friends. By the end of the book he is a much colder and hardened person.

[Anonymous No.4433917]

>>4432495

[Anonymous No.4433952]

>please recommend me some books where the protagonist is evil, a villain.
As you have seen it all descends to a discussion of ethics.
what fiction has been named here?
>Clockwork Orange
it is a manipulative sadist gloating in first person. Burgess also seems to have a hang up with young people having sex with strangers at a tender age. To him it's an important part of evil. The central idea is that there's this soul thing deciding if you're good or bad which cannot be twisted by torture or conditioning. This pov is told explicitly by a cleric character who, however, can be duped because he is good towards the evil ones. There are some sadist police authorities and there scientists who do not regard the protagonist as anything but a guinea pig. This is wrong according to Immanuel Kant.
>American Psycho
Another sadist story. i have only read parts of it. They got some haughty yuppie monologues and raunchy and vivid descriptions of gore.
>Crime and Punishment
It's got a heartless German landowner, a bland and sleazy nouveau riche suitor, it has got the hard-hitting business lady brutalizing her sister, a manipulative detective who reduces innocents to tears and false confessions as well as a "murderer" and a "whore" (forced by the circumstance!) who both repent after having read the bible. That is a very Manichean book. Evil is identified with ideas stemming from the west in an unambiguous dream. Good's rashka-parashka and jesus h. christ. Evil is Napoleon and Nietzsche.
>Beowolf
This one is much more explicit than all of the above in identifying Grendel with teh evol ("yfel" in OE). This is a novelty for the sagas which had previously a complex net of loyalties between the beasties, the men and the gods.
In German the cognate to "evil", "übel", means "bad" or "harmful". The English cognate to the German word for evil, "böse", is "bad". This grand discovery is the basis for a book by Friedrich Nietzsche called the genealogy of morals. He believed that the idea of evil has first came up amongst the stupid, disenfranchised slaves in Egypt who had no control over their fate and thus reduced everything to the sinful and the virtuous rather than plotting anything more sophisticated as it was supposedly common in the "heathen" "master morality".
speaking of Beowulf there is also a book by John Gardner called
>Grendel
It's got another first person sadist giving multiple justifications for his eating of the Danes. He regards them as game, he notes they aren't any better themselves with their imperialism, he has a personal vendetta with the king who nearly slaughtered him; first doubts are raised upon hearing the creation story from the Bible on how everything in the world has a purpose. But once his doubts are dispelled by the dragon he returns to eating Danes until he is killed by Beowulf who brutally mauls him while demanding to "praise the walls". The explicit notion of "evil" does come up once when he thinks of break his own rules - eating royals.

[Anonymous No.4433964]

>>4433917
That movie scared the gay out of me as a child.

[Anonymous No.4433972]

let's go on
>Nab's Low Leeta
Umberto is selfish, no less than that boorish Murrican mother who has sacrificed her daughter just to get Umber Umber. I think Nabokov, just like Burgess, has been shocked by young people wearing short skirts and having sex. He mentions that several times. Now, humbo jumbo is bad, he is an egoist who wants the cunt in order to breed him another Lo. That other suitor is another cartoon network-tier bad guy figure doing "unspeakable" things on his evil ranch of evil which still drive old lo to tears. Aside from that it is a usual noble's fling story together with the girlfriend getting a bland and vulgar husband in the end.

[Anonymous No.4433975]

>>4433917
Moar like
>Dorian Gay

[Anonymous No.4434070]

>>4432538
Merely a victim of passion and love, it's not his fault society started looking down on the nature of his actions.

[Anonymous No.4434097]

The best "villains" are the one you don't see as villains but you characters you agree with, no one roots for someone they despise. Antiheroes and protagonists walking around the moral gray area have been part of literature since forever, I think OP is looking for a book where the protagonist is as dark and edgy as he possibly can be and still comes out on top.

[Anonymous No.4436113]

Filth by Irvine Welsh

The Protagonist is a villain, clearly. He's also one of the biggest assholes in literature.

[Anonymous No.4436642]

The third section of The Sound and the Fury is narrated by an asshole. Not really the protagonist but it might tickle your fancy.

[Anonymous No.4436654]

Are there any movies that follow the choose your own adventure format, where you can affect the story?

[Anonymous No.4436660]

>>4433739
The British version. In the American version, he never becomes good.

Mika Waltari has few novels where the main characters, if not outright evil, are morally very ambigious. I'd recommend The Roman if evil is what interestest you and The Egyptian if you want feels.

[Anonymous No.4437446]

>>4433872
Too bad the more Hannibal becomes the focus character the shittier the books/movies get.

[Anonymous No.4439502]

>>4434070
>>4432978
>>4432847

[Anonymous No.4439513]

>>4437446
Mostly because Harris wasn't really interested in writing them, I think.

[Anonymous No.4441113]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist