Villains to Imitate

Darcy Pattison — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:59:13 +0000

Great Villains to Study and Imitate

Harpercollins editor Susan Rich’s favorite villain are those in Roald Dahl’s stories. “I have great admiration for Roald Dahl’s villains. Farmer Boggis, Farmer Bounce, and Farmer Bean come to mind, the evil trio in Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. All three are boneheads, are united in their mission, and all three share that villainous trait of being so single minded about accomplishing their nefarious plot that they lose sight of all reason. Such disregard for logic makes them all the more frightening, and all the more fallible. ”

Carol Saller, editor for Cricket Books, says, “My favorite villain is definitely Arawn the Death Lord in Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. Because we don’t see him directly, but only as he appears in various forms, each reader is left to imagine him as horribly as possible. He is so evil and so powerful that we can’t imagine how Taran will ever defeat him. And his agents the Huntsmen are themselves so unimaginably powerful (since killing one makes the rest stronger), Taran’s task takes on a heroic stature from the start.”

For more examples of villains, study The Oxford Books of Villains, by John Mortimer, the author of the Rumpole of the Bailey mysteries. He provides literary excerpts detailing villainy. These tend to be more the Victorian-type villains, but includes everything from Cain to Moriarty to Captain Hook. To study villainous characters in children’s books, begin with the following list. These villains represent a wide range of “bad guys” from the sympathetic Herdmans to the frightening Cruella DeVille.

Count Olaf in One Unfortunate Accident by Lemony Snicket
Voldemort in Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum
Judd Travers in Shiloh by Phillis Naylor
Miss Slighcarp in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
Archie in The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Cruella DeVille in 1001 Dalmations by Dodie Smith
Camilla Capybara in Hooway for Wodney Wat by Helen Lester
IT in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle.
The villains in the Redwall books by Brian Jacques: Cluny the Scourge, Badrang, etc.
The Warden in Holes by Louis Sachar
Charlie Simms in The Well by Mildred D. Taylor
Artemis Fowl in Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
The Herdmans in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

Read About More Characters

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.