Most Evil Character in Bookdom

Who is the most evil, low-down,mean and nasty sonnafabitch' in books? Satan doesn't count, too easy.

There are so many but 1 comes to mind.. Jack Randall from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. He was a character you just hated.

Mrs. Coulter from His Dark Materials.

Randall Flagg in The Stand

eabell-- ohh that is a good one but he was like the devil

Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!

The Gentlemen With The Thistledown Hair from my most favorite book of all time Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

>5 scrpo1027:
I know - I cheated a little by ignoring the Satan doesn't count part, but he's just so creepy.....

Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men is certainly a "bad-ass". I also believe several of the characters in Blood Meridian are unpleasant.

Indeed, The Road is also full of degenerates, not least the unnamed character called "Baby Eater" in the IMDB entry for the film of the book.

What is it with McCarthy? He needs some more laughter in his life I think. :)

Steerpike from Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake was pretty evil.

Not sure is this is the MOST evil, but I read Cockpit (by Jerzy Kosinski) many years ago and was blown away by the way the main character (Tarden?) murdered someone by having them stand in front of a plane, then secretly turned on the radar -- or something like that -- knowing that the guy would eventually die of radiation exposure without understanding how it happened. Sorry my memory is so vague, but this was the most evil and brilliant way of killing someone I could imagine at the time.

k4k

I don't know about most evil either, but my mind goes immediately to Big Nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

edited to provide a Touchstone instead of an underline (Doofus)

Madam Defarge from The Tale of Two Cities her single mindedness and intent were uber-creepy.

*eyes The Inferno and Paradise Lost*

Hmm... Satan? :P Nah.

I think the majority of the characters in Hart's Hope are pretty nasty, including the ones that I thought were actually good, but turned out to be evil. Most especially vile is Asineth/Queen Beauty, however.

anyone read the Preacher comicbook series by Garth Enis? Jody was so freakin' mean, if a dude kills yer Dad and yer dog... well thats just evil.

Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

Voldemort from Harry Potter

kmoellering you're my hero! I love Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and absolutely found The Gentleman With The Thistledown Hair to be the epitomy of evil. Glad to find someone else who "got" that book.

The Judge from Blood Meridian.

Well, Johnny from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is pretty evil, and conscience-less. That is a comic, though

The vampire in Salem's Lot.

I would nominate Cathy Ames/Kate from East of Eden.

21> Good one george1295-- I saw that movie when I was a kid & slept with a crucifix forever lol....

Top 5, because I can't pick just one:

- Miss Trunchbull from Matilda
- At the risk of groans/accusations of obviousness, Lord Voldemort/Tom Riddle
- Anna Karenina's husband, Alexei Karenin - may not have actually tried to be evil, but I personally found his character, coldness, and disregard for others, despicable.
- The owners of A Scanner Darkly's New Path
- The narrator of A Cask of Amontillado

Almost picked Randall Flagg too, eabell - but yes, he is supposed to be the devil, isn't he?
ParadoxicalRae, Steerpike may have done a lot of evil things, but I still liked him. I've only seen the BBC miniseries though, not read the books.

We can't forget Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.

The list wouldn't be complete without someone mentioning Iago from Shakespeare's Othello.

I'd just prepared to mention Iago, but I've been beaten to it, it seems.

I cannot confine my answer to merely one character, but rather, the four main libertines from Marquis de Sade's novel, 120 Days in Sodom. Perhaps they are separate technically speaking, but they seem to represent one thing, so in my mind they can be counted as one singular character. I'd also like to say to any of you not to out of curiousity, or whatever else compels you, to read the novel. There's little to be gained from it, as it isn't particularly well written - it serves mostly to provoke with its boundless obscenities, which wear increasingly thin and ultimately loses any affect it may have had. It's amazing to me what you can become desensitised to.

Wow- this is a tough one. But I have to pick someone from a recent read.

William Hamliegh from "Pillars of the Earth"

My girlfriends and I have had such passionate hate-filled conversations about him! He is evil!

There are so many!!!
I'd probably have to say someone from Eragon...the Shade that injured him maybe?
The hard part about that is most "evil" characters also have their good sides.
Unless the satan was being portrayed I've never read a book with a 100% evil character. They always have a hint of good in them or at least something that makes you feel sorry for them!

Count Olaf from A series of unfortunate events. He spends his life trying to murder orphans! That's pretty evil.

Also, don't forget the classic female instigators like Lady Macbeth.

Queen Jenestra in Orcs by Stan Nicholls. The author continuously mentions to the reader how evil she is. She rapes, she murders, she eats hearts. You don't want to know what she uses a unicorn for.

Whoops, not Tom Loker. He actually became decent after getting the beat down. I meant Simon Legree.

The first one that came to mind was Sauron. I have read a few of the others books mentioned but could not specifically recall their evildoers (or, if I could recall them, they seemed on par with Cruella De'Ville from 101 Dalmations).

U Po Kyin is one of the nastier characters in the unpleasant colonial novel Burmese Days.

Cersei Lannister from George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series.

bookoholic13 made a great choice with Dolores Umbridge. Every time I would get to her part my stomach would clench.

I would like to also add Saruman from Lord of the Rings to the list.

I'm assuming we're only selecting evil people from fiction? Otherwise...anybody else ever read Helter Skelter?

Thus far, I would have to go with Randall Flagg of Stephen King's 'The Stand'. He is my kind of man.

38> I agree with you on HP & Lord of the Rings

39> he was listed earlier but I dont think he really counts because he is the Devil.

Popeye in Faulkner's Sanctuary is also a helluva nasty character.

#24
Annie, I don't think the narrator in A Cask of Amantillado, was so bad. After all, didn't Fortunado insult him? Horrors! ;)

Francis Begbie in Trainspotting

Acheon Hades from the eyre affair the only one who is actually evil, and doing his deeds for fun. All the rest below are bad - and probably commit worse acts, but do so for personal reasons, rather than the shear 'because I can' of Hades.

Lord Foul thomas covenant

Almost everyone in the real story

Sauron has a boss - Melkor I think - he's evil. Sauron's merely bad.

Victor Hobie in Tripwire:

Hannibal Lecter maybe? Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal by Thomas Harris

Although maybe you could argue that the tragic circumstances in Hannibal Rising turned his mind?

Sarah Palin in Going Rogue?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Too funny Sandydog1

The aunt, Ruth, from The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. To make matters worse, the novel is based on fact, and the real-life Ruth spent her twilight years a free woman. If there's any justice in the universe, she's shoveling shart somewhere.

Annie Cook from Evil Obsession. A deeply evil woman who, unfortunately, was not a fictional character.

How about Joan Crawford sadly for real in Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford

13> Charles Dickens did such wonderfully colorful characters, good and bad, although mostly not terribly complex. His evil characters are sometimes leavened by humor but Dickens doesn't generally try to help the reader understand them. They're just bad. But of his villains, Madam Defarge, although it's very creepy how she's exercising hidden power of life and death over the aristocrats, doesn't seem his most evil to me. She’s more an instrument of justice, helping to turn Fortune’s wheel to give those aristo their comeuppance. For the honor of most evil, from the works I've read, I would nominate Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist as Dickens nastiest piece of work.

51 > I haven't read Oliver Twist yet but Madam Defarge wasn't justice, she was revenge with out conscience. Though now I'll have to push Oliver Twist up on my To Read list just to compare.

The Grandmother in Flowers on the Attic by VC Andrews. To lock up innocent children, even intent to kill them...

Brrrrr.

The cruelest man in bookdom has to be Sweeney Todd in the original story, The String of Pearls by Anon (The touchstone was showing up some other book with same title). He is the purest anti-hero. There is nothing to commend him. He is just evil.

Professor Moriarty

Captain Ahab in Moby Dick for trying to kill that poor l'il ol' whale....shame on you Ahab!

God.

No, not your God.

Westboro Baptist Church’s God may be the most evil character ever conceived by the mind of man.

The Church’s mission is to “spread God’s hate.” In their theology, where John 3:16 talks of God’s love for the world, “the world” refers not to the whole world, but to those very select few whom God has chosen to be His believers. If you are one of the 99.9999% of the world whom God has chosen not to be believers, you are going to burn in Hell. There’s not a thing you can do about it, and there never was. You were doomed from the moment God created you.

The message of their protests? They’re not telling you to become a believer. They’re not telling you to change your behavior. They’re telling you that God is going to torture you for all eternity, and that they are very, very happy about this.

The most evil person in bookdom is Sweeney Todd in The String of Pearls, the original story. He has no saving grace and subjects numersous people to the cruelest of experiences simply to enrich himself and cover up his crimes. He is an anti-hero with not a single saving grace. This element of his character has been watered down in all the screen representations of his story, and is the biggest failing of Tim Burton's film on the subject.

Nineteen Eighty-Four comes to mind, though I don't know what characters in particular to name - Big Brother, I guess? It was more like the society as a whole.

Watership Down struck me as having a horrible villain, though that was in childhood and I can't recall any longer why I thought the General so awful.

The Golden Key features a pretty awful one, if you're into fantasy novels, as does Kushiel's Avatar.

Aztec, for what his rival does to the narrator's sister. How he even came up with that idea ... And more chilling villains and scenes follow, all the way up to Herman Cortes himself.

I can't remember the characters' names in The Game of Thrones but the short guy's family members were rotten people. I do so wish for a happy ending for him!

>58 captrek: Strange ideology. It leaves the rest of us no incentive to behave.

Since bookdom is the focus, the most evil character has got to be Steerpike in Titus Groan, because he burns down a library.

I would have to say Saint Dane from the Pendragon books by D. J. MacHale. He's manipulating, he's way too smart, he can change his form into other people (and become totally like that person), and he'll stop and nothing to get his way, no matter how much he kills.

Annie Wilkes from Misery turned my stomach.

The Ice Queen from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a nasty piece of work.

^ That would be Jadis. She's even more evil in The Magician's Nephew, in which she kills every living thing in an entire world.

In that book, I agree that she's really evil, but not so much in the sequel. I can't stand that series. I made it past half of book three before I stopped. The Magician's Nephew was really, really good, but then it fell flat very quickly. And the movies don't make the series any better.

Happily I've not read it, but The End of Alice appears to feature a candidate.