Most Famous Negative Characters From Books

Just as books make us fall in love with protagonists, they also make us hate antagonists. Villains make our blood crawl and our guts squirm. Here’s a list of the best and most famous negative characters from books.

Voldemort

Harry Potter’s villain, the noseless Voldemort is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word villain. Voldemort is an exceptionally talented orphan who is hungry for power and will do anything to get it. Depicted as a heartless man without remorse, his fate is inextricably woven with our protagonist Harry’s.

Joffrey

This Game of Thrones villain is not powerful or iconic – he simply makes you hate him to the very core. Basically, his contriving mother Cersei Lannister influences him into becoming a tyrant. He is a terrible husband and is extremely selfish and gullible as well. The way he treats Sansa will make your blood boil.

Rasheed

From Khaled Hosseini’s popular novel ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ which is a moving story of two women. These two women find unexpected friendship though life. Life which put them against each other. The villain of this story is a Rasheed, a misogynistic man who physically and emotionally abuses his two wives. He also mistreats his daughter.

Dracula

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a vampire. He isn’t like Edward Cullen – a handsome vampire who courts humans. Dracula is a true monster – made so by his cruel and inhuman motives. It is because of his famous, or rather infamous, cruelty that there are so many movie, tv show and even video game adaptations of him.

Big Brother

The Orwellian antagonist in 1984 has a specialty – we never see him appear or converse in the book. Even though he is a powerful presence that permeates the book, he is so unreachable in the heights of his powers that we cannot touch him. He basically represents the totalitarian regime where one person is most powerful, and does anything to stay powerful. This includes obliterating the concept of history and love.

Lady Macbeth

The epitome of ambition, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth influences her husband into choosing the evil path. He goes on to murder the king and all possible heirs and also wreaks havoc in the life of his subjects. Lady Macbeth’s sinister politics and her cruel ways cost her, her sanity. Soon the depths of madness ravage her being – and that is her repentance.

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s monster, Frankenstein, even though his fiercest opponent is called a monster today. Frankenstein was the one who wanted to create a monster, who looked just like him and thought nothing of the implications of his act.

Satan

This list really couldn’t be written without mentioning the primordial villain – the one who caused the Biblical fall of mankind! In John Milton’s epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’, he talks about the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden which cause the fall of man. Here, the inciter of temptation is Satan, whom Christians all over the world regard as the ‘devil’ today.

Sandeep

The villain of Nobel laureate Tagore’s ‘Home and the World’ is a charismatic but selfish homebreaker. He entices and seduces his friend Nikhil’s wife Bimal, who has never stepped out of her home and seen the world before. He is selfish, greedy, uncaring and exploitative of everyone he meets. Basically, he isn’t the most powerful villain, simply a bad human being.

Moriarty

Arthur Conan Doyle created a masterpiece with Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes, and perhaps for the first time introduced the trope of the mad genius. Indeed, Holmes, the ingenious detective found a worthy rival in none other than Moriarty. Moriarty was an equal match for Holmes – just as intelligent, just as observant and just as incredibly knowledgeable. The only different was the use to which Moriarty put his intelligence – malevolence and maliciousness.

Also Read: 15 Most Loved Male Characters from Books