Abcde BLOG

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish.  Each week we get a different literary topic on which to make our top ten lists.  It's loads of fun--stop by!  This week's topic is asshats in literature--those real jerks you just want to throttle.  The original intention was male characters, but there are plenty of female jerks as well.

1.  Stevens from The Remains of the Day.  I love him; I really do, but he's a jerk who breaks Miss Kenton's heart without even realizing it.


2.  Anse Bundren from William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.  Any guy who makes his children do all his work, then steals ten dollars from his daughter to get his new teeth deserves a punch of the bracket.

3.  The Miller from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

4.  Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  Despite the fact that he's morally culpable for multiple murders, all he can think about is his own melancholy.  I really want to shake him.


5.  The husband, John, in The Yellow Wallpaper.  Each time I read "Bless her little hear, she shall be as sick as she wants," it makes me want to retch.  Patronising do-gooder extraordinaire.

6. and 7.  These two are a pair.  Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.  Both of them seem to be cruel just for the sake of cruelty.  The world would be a nicer place without them.


8. and 9. are also a pair of stinkers from the same set of works--Rita Skeeter and Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter books.  Yes, Voldemort is a true asshat, but Peter Pettigrew betrays the deep trust reposed in him, and Rita Skeeter cares for no one but herself, going so far as to twist people's words.  Being the type who deals in words for my living, I can't excuse her cavalier attitude.


10.  Zaphod Beeblebrox from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I think that, like Trillian, we are supposed to find Zaphod both infuriating and somehow charming.  He's just infuriating for me.