What's the nastiest thing a fictional character could do and still retain our sympathy?

Scat porn.

I don't know if I'd 'identify' with Flashman! The one book I read I would have been quite happy for him to have had his balls cut off. Humbert is definitely not sympathetic. Tom Ripley is but that's also something to do with the people he's up against not being very sympathetic? Perhaps?

SPOILER ALLERT! In Clarissa Lovelace rapes Clarissa and then is wracked with guilt and, I think we're suppose to feel something for him when he dies (Oops but it's difficult to really sympathise with him! Not least because the agonisingly slow pace of the book has driven the reader crazy long before any of this happens.

you can still hate a character you sympathise with so yes to all of these.

I'm having trouble of thinking of any sympathetic fictional wife-beaters off the top of my head, that may just be a lapse of memory though.

Faulkner was brilliant at testing the limits of this.

James Ellroy's American Underworld trilogy is one of the best examples of a writer forcing you to cheer on murderers etc. I am so excited for the 3rd part.

Also The Bone People has some pretty horrific child abuse by a sympathetic* character.

*This is debatable, I suppose.

I'm having trouble of thinking of any sympathetic fictional wife-beaters off the top of my head, that may just be a lapse of memory though.

Cassidy from Preacher? (Though he beats up his gf, not wife.)

Not that it makes any difference.

Tom Ripley is but that's also something to do with the people he's up against not being very sympathetic? Perhaps?

The people Ripley kills (in The Talented Mr Ripley in any case) are pretty harmless, I think. Dickie Greenleaf is just a bit of a feckless youth, he's not evil or anything. And yet we're thrilled when he's killed and we want Ripley to get away with it. I think it's interesting that here our suspension of disbelief is seemingly coupled with suspension of moral beliefs. In aesthetic philosophy there's a lot written about "imaginative resistance", ie what things in a fiction make us less able to suspend disbelief. One view is that if a (fictional) world has radically different moral precepts, we find it harder to suspend disbelief. But the Ripley stories seem to disprove this...

Jason Compson treats Dilsey and the slow kid badly.

he also treats Caddy badly. but you're supposed to hate him.

http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/sputnik/53/scifi/dredd1.gif

I didn't have any sympathy for Patrick Bateman. I think the old rat in the vagina is where my line is.

Not trying to take the piss or anything, but this is the wrong question.

Why search fiction when there are so many real-life applicants?

bizarre, i was going to say pete bondurant from ellroy's 'underworld' novels. a likeable enough guy considering he's a thug who helps orchestrate jfk's assassination.

Do we sympathise with Gulliver Foyle in Besters Gulliver Foyle?

wtf?

I mean in Tiger! Tiger!

A skillful enough writer could make a character who was unrepentantly responsible for genocide sympathetic if that was his or her intention.

Hannibal Lecter?

Not trying to take the piss or anything, but this is the wrong question.

Pose the right one.

Hannibal Lecter was very charming and quite the gourmand.

A skillful enough writer could make a character who was unrepentantly responsible for genocide sympathetic if that was his or her intention.

Maybe, but "sympathetic" would be such a boring thing for that kind of character to be.

Pose the right one.

I only mean that "nasty but retains sympathy" isn't really the trick -- nasty but human, maybe. Loathsome but recognizable, in the best case enlightening. Fuck a lot of sympathy. You can hate hate hate a protagonist and still be engaged with him or her.

I was thinking about this question the other day when I saw a trailer for Dexter on a DVD.

Why search fiction when there are so many real-life applicants?

We're very rarely going to feel sympathetic with murderers, psychopaths, rapists or what have you in real life: we're not going to want them to do the crimes or get away with them. I think it's interesting that in the fictional world it's different, and that one of the things we might throw out the window when entering a fictional world is our moral instincts... I'm interested in the way fictional worlds are different from the real world, and in which ways they have to be the same for the fiction to work.

we're not going to want them to do the crimes or get away with them

Crime and Punishment, though. That one's great like that.

Your point about being engaged rather than sympathetic is good but if you aren't engaged you're liable to just stop reading.

there's also a pretty notable disinction sympathy for a fictional character and empathy for their plight, cf american psycho

SPOILER ALLERT! In Clarissa Lovelace rapes Clarissa and then is wracked with guilt and, I think we're suppose to feel something for him when he dies (Oops but it's difficult to really sympathise with him! Not least because the agonisingly slow pace of the book has driven the reader crazy long before any of this happens.

BAHAHAHA spoiler alert for Clarissa! Like maybe FIVE things happen in that book.

http://www.stevecake.com/Other%20stuff/the-harder_they_come.jpg

empathy for their plight, cf american psycho

Yeah, I didn't have that either.

i didn't read this thread but it is a silly question

BAHAHAHA spoiler alert for Clarissa! Like maybe FIVE things happen in that book.

A spoiler alert for an 18th century novel is pretty amusing in itself. Hey, we're just that kind of high-falutin board!

Thomas Covenant commits a rape at the start of the 6 novel thing by Stephen Donaldson but he's obviously still supposed to be broadly sympathetic.

SPOILER ALERT: Moll Flanders has like eight kids and they never get mentioned once she moves away from them, which makes no sense! She steals WATCHES, guys! Hope I didn't ruin the book for you!

Actually M.G. Lewis' The Monk has a lot of stuff that would be BIG spoilers! And I would say Castle of Otranto, too, but actually SO much insane shit happens in that book, on every page, that you could easily name ten or twelve thing and still not ruin the dozens of other weird surprises. (SPOLIER ALERT: All the fucking prophecies come true in very obvious ways!)

I pretty much only like 18th century novels and sci-fi anymore. :(

Robinson Crusoe's in this big fucking shipwreck, and he's stuck on an island! Then, like, ten years later this ship picks him up and he goes home again.

SPOILER ALERT: The person with the birthmark is some royalty or aristocrat's lost or kidnapped baby!

(This could be like eight novels here.)

SPOILER ALERT: She ends up going to the convent to keep her uncle from marrying her!

SPOILER ALERT: It's kind of episodic so there's not much of a plot, but everyone they meet shares their entire background story for one or more chapters! Surprise!

I'd guess that Moll Flanders' abandonment of her kids didn't have the same moral meanings for 18th century readers tho. Same probly applies to lots of other stuff from books back then.

SPOILER ALERT: She's forced into prostitution when a procurist convinces her to London!

NV, not that she abandons her kids as a morally nonsensical thing, but she's just like, "See ya!," moves on, and never are they mentioned again. (Except Defoe keeps inaccurately stating the number of children she's had! The Norton critical edition is great because you can tell the editor is kind of pissed about these inconsistencies in the footnotes, "In fact, Defoe has once again forgotten she had three children in (British tiown), not two, grumble grumble.")

SPOILER ALERT: This guy has an objective. Despite various obstacles, he achieves it. Along the way he learns some stuff.

I've long had an idea - which is sort of ripped from Borges, I suppose - of a protagonist who wants to commit a suicide of the soul as well as the body, to become totally beyond the pale of being remembered with kindness by anybody he's ever known, so he commits the worst imaginable crime for no reason other than to do this to himself.

That sounds kind of like I was intentionally failing my classes for w hile. Sort of.

It's partly an idea about abnegation, and that's the bit I think Borges' "Three Versions of Judas" made me think of, and partly wondering just what you'd have to do to turn away everybody who ever cared about you. And yeah, maybe it's partly about my Dad failing his classes on purpose as a kid.

I think even most of Defoe's contemporaries thought he was a hack, right?

I'm having trouble of thinking of any sympathetic fictional wife-beaters off the top of my head, that may just be a lapse of memory though.

Ralph Kramden?

BAHAHAHA spoiler alert for Clarissa! Like maybe FIVE things happen in that book.

Five? Even that;s pushing it. Over 1500 pages! They don't write 'em like they used to...

Maria McCann's <i>As Meat Loves Salt</i> is a clever, complex example of this.

Won't get any more spoilerish by elaborating.

Ooo, good call on Judge Dredd nuking East-Meg 1 way upthread. Only just noticed that.

there's also a pretty notable disinction sympathy for a fictional character and empathy for their plight, cf american psycho

This is the same point I was about to post. As Hitchcock proved with Psycho, you can root for an unsympathetic character if he's put in a tricky situation, against uneven odds. You want Norman Bates or Tom Ripley to avoid being caught, not because you've forgotten all you moral instincts, but because the drama in these movies have been built on the tension of whether or not they'll manage to escape their situation.

I don't think most people who watch Psycho are rooting for Norman Bates.

Not 'rooting' but I felt sorry for him at the end. Is that the same as being sympathetic? This thread has me confused.

mickey and mallory ?

because i guess that's a big point of the film

what about Buscemi's character in Con Air, a sick pedo/murdering fucker (although we don't see him actually take part in any of his so-called dark desires) he became a sort of "hurrah he escaped!" happy ending figure.

destroy an entire city as godzilla is represented to have done

Speaking hypothetically, and given the right story and lead-up plot, one might be persuaded into sympathy for someone who killed and ate their spouse. But not their children. Certain proprieties must be observed and all that.

Delany's Tides of Lust and Hogg to thread.

what about Buscemi's character in Con Air

But at the end isn't there this girl on a swingset or something, and he's nice to her? And we're supposed to think he's changed? That's how I remember it anyway but that's before SPOILER ALERT Nic Cage crashes the plane into a bunch of Vegas signs

And at the end we see him free enjoying playing craps in Vegas and drinking a cocktail.

And I felt pretty stoked for him.

Ozymandais kills pretty much all of New York.

Yeah, but to SAVE ALL MANKIND, so they would have died from the commie nukes anyway.