Monday 18 September 2017

Characterization - Why I Love Dolores Umbridge (Method Mondays)

Yes, you read that right... THE Dolores Umbridge...
    I never thought "I love Dolores Umbridge" would EVER be something I would say, type, or be forced to write in my own blood. Too soon?
    In all seriousness, though, I really do love Umbridge. Well, I hate her, but that's why I love her. It's complicated, I'll admit it. While I do acknowledge that this type of post with Harry Potter characters is just about the most overdone concept ever, bare with me.
    The reason I chose to use Umbridge, and Harry Potter in general, is because I can use it to compare three "types", so to speak, of antagonists.

Type One: Hate to Love Them

    Many of you can probably guess who this example is going to be. (Hint: if you guessed Severus Snape, you're right.) BUT there's another character I want to use as a second example of this: good old Wormtail, Peter Pettigrew. I know I'm opening a literally massive can of worms by even mentioning either of these characters, and I'm sure many of you want to reach through your screens and yell "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING" at me right now. (Side note: please don't, that slideshow scene from It scarred me enough without it happening with my laptop).
    Let me start with this: Yes, both of these characters are flawed. Deeply flawed, in fact. But most people are in real life, and most of the best fictional characters are as well. That's what elevates them from a stock character to the memorable sort that sticks with you long after you put the book down.
    Lets start with Snape. Regardless of you feelings for him as a person, I think there are very few people who haven't felt some sort of pity or affection for Severus Snape, even if it was quickly squashed down. Was his obsession with Lily unhealthy? Yes. Did he bully Harry, Neville, and others for years? Yes. But I think that he honestly thought that was the best thing he could do to keep his status as a double agent.
    Motivation is what really makes a villain, and it's something I'll talk about a lot in this post. For Snape, his motivation was his belief that his actions were the only way to keep his double-agent status and protect those he needed to protect. For Pettigrew, his motivation was fear.
   Both motivations are in their own ways entirely valid. Does this mean that either of them are good people? No. Snape killed Dumbledore, and even before that tormented schoolchildren. Pettigrew betrayed his best friends and let two be killed, one be driven nearly insane in Azkaban, and one live a lonely existence thinking the people he cared most about were either dead or insane (I really feel bad for Lupin, can you tell?) Maybe I'm not making sense; I don't really know. But I do know that it's the motivation these characters had for their villainy that makes them complex and at times sympathetic characters, and not just mustache-twirling cardboard cut-outs.

Type Two: Love to Hate Them

    The second type of villain I want to talk about is the sort of villain that you despise, but also love because of how good a villain they are. I'm going to be using Voldemort for my example here.
   Obviously, no one looks at Voldemort and thinks, "WOW what a great guy! I'd love to hang out with him!" And if you do, well... Maybe you should rethink that one.
   Voldemort is a good villain because he is of course evil, but he's also somewhat sympathetic. He chases eternal life to fill the void left in him due to his inability to love. Like I said above, it's his motivation that makes him an interesting character. Voldemort is an extremely dislikeable character, but he isn't just evil for the sake of being evil, and that's what makes him a terrifying villain. A villain who is evil just for the fun of it may stop eventually due to boredom or because someone tried to stop them. But villains with a goal work toward it despite obstacles, and that's what makes them scarier and harder to defeat than a villain who's evil for the sake of being evil.
   In short, the second type of villain (ie. Voldemort) is a villain who made the conscious choice to become a villain, not out of fear or supposed necessity, but to accomplish a goal. They don't wake up one morning and think "let's go out and kick some puppies for fun", they think "let's kick some puppies because that will get me closer to my goal".

Type Three: HATE. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE.

    Villain type three is the villain who DOES think "let's go kick puppies for fun". This type of villain is one of the rarest, because they're so entirely unsympathetic that readers will feel nothing but hatred for them.
    Now you may be thinking, but isn't the object of a villain to be hated? Why would I want my readers to be sympathetic toward them? I may end up doing another post more in-depth on this later, but let me sum it up here: if there's someone you can't stand in real life - they're a terrible person, and you feel they have no redeeming qualities or reasons to act why they do - how long would you hang around them? Only if you're forced to, right? So why would a reader want to read a book if they absolutely can't stand the villain?
    One of the few exceptions to this rule is, of course, Dolores Umbridge. Now, one could argue that she does have a motivation: her obsession with propriety and rules. But as the books go on, we see that that isn't really an excuse for her behaviour. Perhaps it started that way, yes, but it quickly spirals into, frankly, pure evil. The movies actually have a very interesting, subtle way of portraying this; if you pay attention, as the movies go on Umbridge's clothes become darker shades of pink, portraying her descent into madness.
   Umbridge is a rare type of villain, but it works. Any Harry Potter fan knows hatred of Umbridge is even more universal than hatred of Voldemort, so JK Rowling clearly did something (okay, many things. Pretty much all the things) right! She's so hateable and so unique in a slew of fictional villains that, as much as I despise her, I also love her just because she's able to inspire that kind of hatred in readers.


    So those are just three rather broad categories of villain. There's a lot more to talk about in terms of writing villains, but this is just a nice little introduction post I can refer back to later. Think there's one I missed, or want a more detailed post on something I mentioned here? Let me know on Twitter @victoriacbooks or here, in the comments! Thanks for reading!

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