Harriet Jean Evans looks  at the overriding appeal of evil in literature.

Take a moment to think of your favourite characters from fiction. Okay, now think again: how many of them are the unquestionable hero of the story? Not many? Exactly. For some strange reason, we are drawn to the antiheros in fiction. But what is it that makes these antagonists so compelling? Why do we sometimes cheer less than we should for the hero of the tale?

This has puzzled me for quite some time now. As a writer of fiction myself, I was surprised, and a little unnerved, to find that my favourite characters, and the ones I enjoyed writing the most, were those who could undeniably be said to have committed atrocities and be – dare I say it? – Evil. But then I looked at my bookshelves and tried to think of the heroes and villains of each book I had kept; to my surprise I found that I remembered and enjoyed far more villains than good guys. Bad guys, we have to admit, are just more interesting than the perfect hero who knows how to act well, and continually does so. Therefore, it is (almost) a truth universally acknowledged, that they are infinitely more fascinating.

Of course, there are countless villains in literature who do little to excite anything other than our hate and disgust; these characters are not interesting and can be seen as simply performing a function; representing the “evil side” in a story. Often, these characters are those who are introduced as “evil” and remain so throughout the entire plot. It is a mistake to assume these characters are unexciting because they are deemed “evil”; these characters are unexciting because they do not obey the same rules of character development and variation as other characters in the story. Tolkein’s Sauron is a prime example of this: seen as the embodiment of evil. Sauron is introduced as evil, and ends as evil as he begins, thus exciting neither our fascination nor our sympathy. Though this could be said to be a conscious decision on Tolkein’s part, in order to ensure we remain firmly on the “side” of man and hobbit, despite the transgressions of more interesting characters, such as Smeagal, Denathor and Boromir.

Yet, returning to those villains who fascinate us, it is the antiheros who overreach themselves and fall that we are most drawn to. From the archetypal Faustus, to Alex from A Clockwork Orange, to Scott Lynch’s Locke Lamora, to the legend of Lucifer himself, these characters have beguiled and bewildered us down the centuries along with their (arguable) real life counterparts: men such as Marlowe and Byron and more recently gangsters like John Dillinger. These characters represent those we, as much as we hate to admit it, love to love when we know we shouldn’t, and who fascinate and frustrate us in equal measure.

But if there’s one thing we love more than the bad guy at his height of confident immorality or amorality, it is the antihero at his most vulnerable. It’s the antihero at that moment when he overreaches himself, and the moment that he realises he has done so. There is a fundamental human desire to save, and it is this that comes into play when we read these characters. We want to save them from whatever justice they will ultimately face, and we want to save them from themselves. A good writer will be one who plays on this desire, and who goes out of his or her way to create sympathy for the antihero just before his judgement; but even if they don’t, we still like them. Take Leroux’s Erik (From The Phantom of the Opera). Little sympathy is created for this character (unlike Lloyd Webber’s misleading musical), and he is presented as the foulest of beings. Nonetheless as the tale draws to a close, we can still find a glimmer of pity in our hearts for the lonely creature who dwelt beneath the Opera House, despite the atrocities he has committed. We want to save Erik; it is our challenge, and this rests almost entirely on his motives.

Erik believed he was acting in the name of love; and even a twisted, messed-up kind of love is more sympathetic than simple cruelty. Take the general admiration of Heathcliff among some readers of Wuthering Heights. He is a cruel and mean-spirited man, but it is, to an extent, excused: because he believed himself in love.

But if liking the antiheros makes us uncomfortable, it is even more unsettling when it is the out and out bad guys that fascinate us. People can say that simply black/white dividing lines make things simple and comfortable in books, but this just isn’t true. Take Tom Riddle, or Lord Voldemort, from the Harry Potter books; as a character, Riddle is even more disturbing because he is totally evil. He does not realise he has overreached himself and is therefore more unsettlingly fascinating, because we cannot save him.

Ultimately though, I believe our fascination with the darker characters in fiction to be a result of what we read in them. We can recognise ourselves in all fictional characters, this is true, but it is the amoral or immoral ones that fascinate us the most, because they express the characteristics that we cannot. We all want to act the rebel sometimes; all want to push out against the confines of what is termed “acceptable behaviour”. Of course, we don’t have urges to kill people, or attempt world domination, but that’s not what these antiheros are about. They are about being on the other side of society and prepared to try new things; about what it is to be different. And that is always interesting.

Authors play on this and know that a huge part of the success of a story rests heavily on the shoulders of the bad guy.

No wonder they act so badly: with all that pressure, I’d crack too!