As the midterm election in the USA approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about heroes and villains.
At yesterday’s performance of All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, Patrick Page focused on villains and how all of us have aspects of villains and heroes within.
Do you see heroes and villains in my images for today?
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Here’s the video for this heroes and villains post:
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Thanks to all who do their best to deal with heroes and villains, including YOU!
In the best novels, I think, heroes and villains rarely appear as such on the page except in their interaction with other characters. The reader attaches the label of “hero” or “villain” to them as they read. Is Dracula the hero or the villain of his story? As the titular character, one might suppose he is the hero. But one generally moves him to villain as the story unfolds. Unless …
I think what makes Shakespeare’s villains so fascinating is they’re not just villains but complicated people. We don’t know why Claudius murdered his brother, Hamlet’s father, but his guilt suggests he might have had a motive that wasn’t entirely selfish. Shylock asks, “If you prick me do I not bleed?” He deserves to be recognized as human but that’s denied him. Even Caliban is shaped by how he’s treated.
In life though I’m not sure all villains are so sympathetic.