Midterm blogging time and, yep, I'm behind. Carry on and pretend it never happened or mend the wound with a Blogspot Band-Aid? The first option has become a tired work-horse in my undergraduate career, so the latter is victorious.
With that, let's get evil. Earlier in the semester, Prof. Mulready insisted that Richard III is quite possibly the best fictional villain of all time. Diving into the namesake play, I find myself captivated by the absolute devil that is Gloucester. Hunchbacked, Machiavellian, and always one step ahead of the game, Richard is the chessmaster that manipulates the pawns of his court with little regard towards the weight of his actions. Think about it: he murders the father and husband of Anne Neville and still gets to take home the prize of her hand in marriage. Incredible? I think so.
But, the biggest, baddest, gnarliest, rawest villain of the entire stratosphere of fiction? Half of me has been reading the play for academic pursuit and another half has been searching for the answer to this question. Killing teenage heirs to the throne is pretty dark, but I found myself craving more. More carnage? Blood and guts? Die Hard-worthy bad guy lines? I don't know exactly, but I was sitting in my chair denying any thoughts of a turnaround from the tragedy and expecting something else to push me over the edge. Perhaps it's a case of the society that we live in today, where many of us are so de-sensitized to violence and gains through nefarious means that only the most extreme actions make us raise an eyebrow. Because of that, does Richard's chances of being the baddest dude in all of fiction falter with time? Or does the literary crowd's embrace of the classics keep him seated in a throne made of the darkest facets of our human condition?
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