Top Ten Tuesday: Jerkface!

Thanks to The Broke and the Bookish for hosting this weekly excuse for list-making!  This week's topic is Top Ten Literary Jerks.  Well, I guess the hero/villain dichotomy doesn't really work without Jerky Jerkerson, the jerky mayor of Jerkytown, Jerksylvania, so here are a few I found distasteful.

1.  Anne Coulter-I don't care if she's a real person (and that she isn't literary)!  She's still a bookish jerk!  She is everything that is wrong with the way politics is discussed in this country.  While we disagree about, oh, every single topic in American political and cultural life, I could live with that if she could express her disagreement without calling people names like the playground bully.


2.  Curly, Of Mice and Men-Curly was the boss's son, the little guy who liked to pick fights to try and prove what a man he was.  There should really be a sub-category of jerkiness just for boss's sons.  And to continue a theme...

3.  Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter-While not exactly the boss's son, he was a child of privilege who felt a need to hold it over everyone's head and generally make their lives miserable.

4.  Bill Sikes, Oliver Twist-He takes jerkiness to a whole new level.  I mean, is there any major crime he leaves undone?  Robbery, child abuse, domestic violence, animal cruelty, and murder-he's a one stop criminal shop.  Plus, he's a got a really foul attitude!

5.  Prior Godwyn, World Without End-I've been listening to the second installment of Ken Follett's epic tale of medieval cathedral/bridge building, and while most of the men in the novel make me want to run my car into the embankment with their sexism and superstition, Prior Godwyn takes the cake.  While you have to excuse most of the characters their ignorance due to, you know, the fact that they are living in 14th century England, he is purposefully and willfully deceptive, manipulative, greedy, and dishonest.

6. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, Matilda-While the Trunchbull has made my list of favorite villains and bitc..I mean, mean girls, this category seems prefectly made for Matilda's neglectful, conniving, hateful parents.  Thank goodness for Miss Honey!

7.  Big Jim Rennie, Under the Dome-Stephen King always has some jerky characters in his books, but very few rise to the level of Big Jim.  When the dome descends on his small Maine town, Big Jim, car salesman and city councilman, could have gone into action to help his fellow townspeople.  Instead, he steals their propane, gets anyone who disagrees with him thrown in jail and/or beaten, and tries to protect a meth lab that ends up destroying the whole town when it explodes.  That, and he doesn't even notice his own son has gone off the deep end.

8.  Daniel Cleaver, Bridget Jones Diary-I have to admit that I never read this book, only saw the movie version.  Chick lit isn't really my thing, but the movie had Hugh Grant in it, so there you go.  What I didn't realize going in was that he was the jerkface of that story.  Oh, but what a cute jerkface it is!

9.  Commander Fred, The Handmaid's Tale-Let's see, he and the other powerful men that killed the president and created a theocratic military regime keep fertile women as slaves, refusing to even allow them their own name, all for the glory of God and country.  And the description of the martial bed...ewwwww does not begin to cover it.

10.  Jack Randall, Outlander-When Claire finds herself transported back to 18th century Scotland, the first person she meets is this cruel, sneering man.  He later proves to be sadistic and single-minded in his desire to hurt her and have her husband Jamie as his own.  When Jamie is later captured by Randall, he is tortured and sexually assaulted by him.  Charming.

Top Ten Tuesday: Mean Girls

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely ladies at The Broke and the Bookish for all of us that love lists.  This week's topic is Top Ten Mean Girls.  I had to really give it some thought, since I would probably choose a slightly more, ummm, colorful word to describe most of these women (rhymes with "stitch, if you know what I mean).  I only got up to eight before I ran out of time, but they are pretty representative of the type, I think!

1. Miss Hilly from The Help-I don't know if it was her shocking-by-today's-standards racism, or just her general mean-spiritedness, but she was a character I loved to hate.

2.  Cruella Deville from 101 Dalmations-A fur coat from puppies, do I really need to explain more than that?

3. The Trunchbull, from Matilda-She was the headmistress from Hell, until Matilda gave her her comeuppance!

4.  Lady MacBeth, from, well, you know where-I don't care how bad she felt about it later (out, damned spot!), she started that whole miserable mess.

5. Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest-What a horrible, nasty, cruel person she was!

6.  Mrs. John Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility-Her greed and general snootiness make her a perfect Vistorian mean girl!

7.  Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter-Again with the racism!  Muggles unite!

8.  The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe-The movie version of her was exactly as I envisioned her when I read the books back in the early 1980s.  Haughty and cruel.

This Week's Top Ten-Best Villains

Welcome to another Top Ten, a weekly meme hosted by Jillian at Random Ramblings.  This week's topic is best villains.  I think that writing a good villain is actually more of a feat than writing a good hero. Authors can create flawed, layered, multi-faceted heroes, but to create a truly, deliciously evil villain takes skill beyond the usual. At least in my humble opinion, a great villain is one that you have a end up having a grudging respect for, despite their evilness. They inspire revulsion. They are the characters that we love to hate.

My list comprises characters from young adult and adult fiction, old characters and new. In no particular order, here are my picks...

1. The Trunchbull, from Matilda by Roald Dahl:  The Trunchbull is probably my favorite young adult villain.  There is no other word for her but bully.  She uses her power to make others feel small, and her complete lack of human feeling towards the children under her "care" makes her truly despicable.

2.  Bill Sikes, from Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens:  Even the musical version of Oliver Twist can't make light of the evil that is Bill Sikes.  He's brutal, heartless-basically he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.  Kidnapping, domestic abuse, murder...and no remorse

 3.  Hannibal Lecter, from Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris:  He was already on my list of the best characters I've read, and he fits here as well.   No one embodies what it means to be a sociopathic serial killer like Lecter.  Deliciously played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, he is perhaps the most delightfully chilling character I've ever watched or read.

4.  Nurse Ratched, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kessey:  The story of an Oregon insane asylum is horrifying enough, but add a sadistic, power and control-hungry head nurse and you have a recipe for horror.  Characters like Nurse Ratched are all the more frustrating because of their complete control of the hero.  I felt as helpless as the inmates in the face of Nurse Ratched's calm, rational, evil logic.

5.  The White Witch, from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis:  The way she manipulates Edmund into betraying his brother and sisters was so devious!  And what kind of evil does it take to make it always winter but never Christmas?

6.  Cruella De Vil, from The Hundred and One Dalmations, by Dodie Smith:  I'm not sure that most children's publishers would have the nerve to publish a novel with such a horrible, selfish woman.    I mean, really, she's going to slaughter a bunch of innocent puppies to make a coat.  

7.  Anne Coulter, from, well, every Anne Coulter book:  OK, I know that she is not a fictional character, but I think that her cruel sarcasm, her complete lack of compassion, her namecalling, and her general mean-spiritedness make her truly villainous.  It's not just that she and I disagree politically and philosophically about EVERYTHING.  There are people that I disagree with deeply that I respect and admire.  It's how nasty she is-I would disapprove of her behavior even if she was a flaming liberal like myself putting down conservatives the same way she demonizes liberals.

8.  Max Cady, from The Executioners, by John D. McDonald:  Known better to most people as Cape Fear, from the two movies of that name starring Robert Mitchum and Robert DeNiro respectively, Max Cady is creeeeeeeeepy!

9.  Sauron, from The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R.Tolkien:  The prototype for Harry Potter's Lord Voldemort was darkness and death incarnate.  His evil sucked in all light, all love, all hope.  I think that the scariest part of that series is not the fierce battles between the heroes and the army of Sauron, but the utter devastation and barrenness, the soul-sucking slog that was the journey to Mordor.

10.  Annie Wilkes, R.N., from Misery by Stephen King:  One word-CRAAAAAAZY!  OK, two words-blowtorch.