The Book Nerd’s Guide to Hating a Character
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Welcome to the Book Nerd’s Guide to Life! Every other week, we convene in this safe place to discuss the unique challenges of life for people whose noses are always wedged in books. For past guides, click here.
How many listicles and think pieces have been devoted to the intense revulsion and hatred we feel, as a people, toward Dolores Umbridge? The world may never know. (Though a quick Google search of “Dolores Umbridge” brings up more than 5,000 news results, for those playing along at home.)
It’s interesting to think about how much more we detest Umbridge than the Harry Potter series’ main villain, archetypal evil Voldemort. Sure, he’s despicable and frightening and the stuff of good allegories and all, but Umbridge is so much worse—because we all know an Umbridge. The holier-than-thou crusader, the tormentor, the cloying and two-faced archnemesis make daily appearances in our lives, even if they’re burning things into our souls instead of our hands. J.K. Rowling took her personal Umbridge and made The Umbridge, one at which we could all internally scream.
Umbridge is the teacher who was determined you were a “problem” from the first day of class. Umbridge is the coworker whose polished exterior hides a rotten inner life. Umbridge is the aunt who sends you chain emails and remarks on your recent weight gain in public Facebook comments.
When I discuss characters I hate, I often refer to Umbridge Syndrome, a state in which each turn of the page gets progressively more painful, but you continue to plow toward the denouement, yearning to find out what comeuppance is in store…only to figure out the book isn’t a standalone, and that kick in the pants is going to be a long time coming. Books can be life-ruiners, and not every grotesque character in fiction can have their dress catch fire in a timely manner.
To be clear, there are two strains of hating fictional characters, one good and one bad. Hating a character who is so well-written that the mere mention of their name causes you anxiety, discomfort, or rage is the good kind. Hating a character because they are so bland and unnecessary to the story as to be Scrappy-Doo is the bad kind. If you’re in the latter situation, you may be reading the wrong book. If you’re in the former situation, you may be reading something written by Gillian Flynn or almost anything in Greek mythology.
On that note, does it ever seem as if we make more of a fuss about despising characters these days, because that level of animosity is rarer in a culture that leans more toward “he’s not bad, he’s misunderstood” villainy than “Holy smokes, Humbert Humbert”? Sure, Pottermore canon tells us Umbridge was put on her path by a Muggle-hating father, but, on the other hand, Joffrey Baratheon had no reason for his heinousness outside of “Lannister genes don’t mix well.”
These characters are so ridiculously wretched as to minimize extenuating circumstances, where they exist, and the familiarity of their awfulness makes them all the more infuriating. After all, Gone Girl‘s Amy Dunne is a perfect stand-in for every helicopter-parented wunderkind you’ve ever seen in a 60 Minutes special, or at your high school reunion. But if you look back at the myths that have survived the centuries, well, you’ll find more Amys. The Greeks prefer to fill their stories with the abjectly terrible. (Behavioral expectations hang low when Zeus is your divine example.)
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of bad folks in today’s novels, and plenty of characters to earn your scorn. But it’s worth noting as you work through your to-reads just why you hate a character. Are they bad, or badly done? Are they an exotic breed of evil, or one you know all too well? Be honest with your feelings; after all, one must not tell lies.