Pratchett's Evil Characters

[Tonyblack]

Time we had a thread where we discuss something Discworld related. We may have talked about it before, but I don't see why we shouldn't toss some ideas around.

WARNING Due to the nature of discussing a topic over a series of books, their is a likelihood of spoilers. Try to bear that in mind as you make your comment.

Okay, I've recently reread Unseen Academicals and was struck by the character of Andy Shank. He reminds me of several other Pratchett bad guys, such as Stratford in Snuff and Wolfgang in The Fifth Elephant. Terry has created irredeemable bastards in these characters. They are almost a stereotype of a sociopath, created to cause menace for the heroes, but we suspect that they will somehow be destroyed by the end of the book.

I'm not complaining about this - it's a trope of the ultimate darkness making the light shine brighter.

But what do you all think?

 

[RathDarkblade]

I'm not complaining. These characters remind me - Andy Shank especially - of a bully I used to have the dubious pleasure of knowing at school. He used to bully the smaller kids, and take a perverse pleasure in doing so. In my case, it was because I was an immigrant and didn't know English as well as he did, and also because I didn't play Aussie Rules football, or cricket, and didn't play basketball as well as he did. >:-(

I was relieved when high school was over. There were other bullies in the school, but he was by far the worst. Luckily, he never had a gang of smaller menaces like Andy. Just as fortunately, he never used a weapon bigger than his fist.

Now I may have been small, but I was fast and tough, and I could dodge like anything. One day, after he picked an "after-school fight" with me that ended with the toe of my school-shoe lodged firmly in his danglers, he never picked a fight with me again (although he kept testing the boundaries).

The next year (when we were 16), we started doing Shakespeare. Since English was still relatively new to me, I actually bothered to read the Cliff's Notes and do other research, so I did well. I was also mathematically inclined, so I did well at the complicated maths (e.g. trigonometry etc.) At this point, he and the other bullies came to me and asked me to help them. (They didn't actually have their cap in hand, but I'm sure you get the idea).

Well, after some creative negotiation that included their protecting me from the bigger bullies, I arranged a few one-on-one sessions and helped these bullies. They thanked me, and helped me with football and cricket etc. So from enemies, we became (more or less) "frenemies". They left me alone, I left them alone.

High school was no bed of roses by any means, but it was much better than it might have been...

 

[Tonyblack]

I would agree that these characters are typical bullies. Maybe not so typical, as they are almost parodies of bullies. They have a vicious streak and don't seem to have much of a problem in killing their victims. It is always a pleasure to see them taken down , if not by the main good guy: Vimes, Nutt for example, but by a secondary character such s Pepe or Willikins - What Pepe does to Andy Shank is satisfyingly cruel.

I would put the likes of the grags and the elves in a different category though. But I'll talk about that later maybe.

 

[raisindot]

LOTS of spoiler aread

Pterry tended to create several categories of "villains" in his novels. (Note: I only listed those from the books I like. Meaning none of the RIncewind villains or those from most of the pre-Mort books are considered).

The first set were "full fleshed out" villains that often had deep backstories and often had a bit of "mystical" to them.

In this category, I'd put characters like Teatime, Lilith, Wolfgang, the Burning Man, the Queen of the Elves and the Magpyrs.

The second set, which really started with Night Watch, were simply ordinary psychotic killers, sociopaths all, who very little in terms of depth or abilities beyond their skill to kill and manipulate people. These would include Carcer, Stratford and Andy Shank (one of Pterry's worst character names--patently obvious)

The third set is somewhere in-between. They weren't quite mystical, but the depth of their depictions made them a higher class of adversary than the common criminals. In this group I'd put Dragon the Vampire, Salzella, Vorbis, Ardent, Lord De Worde and Reacher Gilt.

Somewhere between "being bad" and not quite the totally evil "villain" are Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, Cosmo Lavish and Dee the dwarf. Tulip is a victim of his own horrific upbringing. Pin is a Carcer-like thug but in the end he recognizes the evil he has done. Cosmo Lavish is simply not a worthy adversary. And Dee is plagued by her own inner conflicts.

 

[=Tamar]

I'm less inclined to think that Mr Pin recognized the evil he had done, and more inclined to think that he knew all along that what he did was considered evil, but only began to feel fear when he had the vision (from dark light) of all the people he had killed waiting to get back at him. Until then he hadn't cared about the afterlife at all. He also didn't seem to have any religion in his personal history, since he had to steal Mr Tulip's potato to get one. I'd put Pin in with the simple sociopaths like Andy, Stratford, and Carcer.

I'd put Mr Tulip in a class by himself. Mr Tulip has his talent for Art, and what's more, he did recognize the evil he had done and feel remorse. None of the other villains developed to that extent.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Why is Andy Shank such a bad name? I don't get it. *confused* Although it's simple, I'd say it's quite suitable for a football/soccer hooligan like Andy.

At least he wasn't nicknamed "Andy the Dandy" (although there's nothing dandy-ish about him...)

 

[Dotsie]

I imagine raisin thinks it's bad just because it's so obvious. But the prison slang definition of shank isn't so well known in the UK I'd say, less so when UA was published. 'Shank' means leg, don't know if that has significance here?

 

[RathDarkblade]

Well - leg, football? That seems pretty obvious.

I wonder if Pterry had another meaning in mind, though... *ponders*

 

[Tonyblack]

The word "shank" has the sound quality that maybe suggests the evil nature of the character. I feel Terry does this with some of his characters - like an audible clue. Carcer, for example - the very name sounds menacing. Not only does it sound a bit like cancer, but it is also an old word meaning prison - as in Incarceration..

 

[raisindot]

I imagine raisin thinks it's bad just because it's so obvious. But the prison slang definition of shank isn't so well known in the UK I'd say, less so when UA was published. 'Shank' means leg, don't know if that has significance here?

I didn't realize "shank" (meaning prison knife) isn't that common in the UK. But Pterry would certainly have been aware of its meaning. Thus "Andy Shank" to me is a rather obvious pun, like "Handy Shank."

But then UA is full of rather obvious names--Glenda Sugarbean and Trevor Likely, to name a few.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Hmm. Trevor Likely is only obvious if you're aware of The Likely Lads series of the mid-60s, about the friendship of two young working class men in Newcastle on Tyne. There is an ambiguous Northern usage of the word "likely" to mean a small-time troublemaker. That seems to fit our Trev.

As for Glenda Sugarbean... hmm, the name sounds more likely (no pun intended) to have been invented for a Juliet-type character. Glenda is what might be best described as a "fine figure of a woman," along with Lady Sybil and Agnes Nitt. But all three are many-dimensional human characters with a range of interests and feelings, rather than comic relief. The characters are not defined by their body type, but do encounter issues stemming from others' perception of them (e.g. Lady Sybil is underestimated by her captors in The Fifth Elephant) or from their own insecurities (as does Agnes in Maskerade). Glenda is constantly reminded of Juliet's beauty and her own comparative plainness, but handles this with a tremendous practicality. I like Glenda very much.

 

[Tonyblack]

I disagree about The Likely Lads and hadn't even remotely considered Trevor Likely being a reference. Again it is partly the harmonics of the name. It would be difficult to imagine Andy's character with a name like Trevor Likely. It's almost like Terry has gone out of his way to tell us that Trevor is someone we might admire and want to get behind. The fact that I didn't like him at the start of the book was a little unsettling.

 

[raisindot]

I disagree about The Likely Lads and hadn't even remotely considered Trevor Likely being a reference. Again it is partly the harmonics of the name. It would be difficult to imagine Andy's character with a name like Trevor Likely. It's almost like Terry has gone out of his way to tell us that Trevor is someone we might admire and want to get behind. The fact that I didn't like him at the start of the book was a little unsettling.

That's exactly what Trevor's surname suggested to me. And to me Glenda's last name isn't a reference to her figure but to her great talent as a baker and cook. Another rather obvious name.

 

[Mixa]

Hey, this is a very interesting topic!

They are almost a stereotype of a sociopath, created to cause menace for the heroes, but we suspect that they will somehow be destroyed by the end of the book.

I'm not complaining about this - it's a trope of the ultimate darkness making the light shine brighter.

But what do you all think?

Yes, in fact, one of the reasons I love Discworld is because I know in this world at least some bad guys will get what they deserve… But on the other hand… are the good guys always that good? Vetinari practically is an evil villain, but we somehow love him anyway, and enjoy when he succeeds. Vimes has a lot of darkness inside him as well, and he could be really evil if he wanted to…

The word "shank" has the sound quality that maybe suggests the evil nature of the character. I feel Terry does this with some of his characters - like an audible clue. Carcer, for example - the very name sounds menacing. Not only does it sound a bit like cancer, but it is also an old word meaning prison - as in Incarceration..

I think the Spanish translation lost that… they simply translated "Shank" as part of a leg… and that doesn’t sound very menacing… apart from receiving a leg blow… XP

Mx

 

[Tonyblack]

Well, I can see why they would have translated it to a part of the leg. It is another meaning of the word "shank". But I agree that it's not a good translation. Incidentally, there is a phrase over here: "Shank's pony" meaning to walk. As in: Q. How are you getting there? A. On Shank's pony.

Vetinari is indeed an interesting character. I think we could have a whole discussion about his calculating ways. I think he lost a good deal of the shadiness in the later books.

 

[raisindot]

Vetinari is indeed an interesting character. I think we could have a whole discussion about his calculating ways. I think he lost a good deal of the shadiness in the later books.

He lost a whole bunch of things in the later books, including his sharp wit and subtlety. I always put UA as the start of the decline of Vetinari, when he got drunk (something he would never have done in early books) and spouted long monologues about the nature of being a tyrant. By the time of the last two books, where he's nearly having a tantrum over crossword puzzles, he's a pale shadow of his former greatness.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Hmm, I'm surprised that Mr Clete (from "Soul Music") hasn't been mentioned yet.

Spoiler

Hat. Hat. Hat.

He's not as villainous as Carcer or Mr Teatime, but in "Soul Music", he's definitely

Spoiler

nasty and mean.

What do you think?

 

[Tonyblack]

Re: Pratchett\'s Evil Characters

I think Clete is more sociopath than psychopath. He's of the opinion that his job would be a whole lot easier if there weren't people around to complicate things. A bit like the Auditors. Now I think of it, it's a bit of a reoccurring theme. Dios in Pyramids is something like that. It's what makes him different to Vorbis in Small Gods - sociopath compared to psychopath. Admittedly, some of Terry''s sociopaths would go as far as killing to make their job easier, but they aren't quite to the point where they'd kill just for fun, or because they are incapable of empathy.

 

[=Tamar]

Re: Pratchett\'s Evil Characters

I find it difficult to disentangle Real Vetinari from Double-of-Vetinari. Sometimes those not-quite-right reactions indicate that it is the body double. It is especially noticeable in RS when Drumknott is as entranced with Iron Girder as is RealV, and Double realizes he has to go it alone. But it has been a while since I read RS so I can't swear to specifics.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Re: Pratchett\\\'s Evil Characters

Er... is there a Double-of-Vetinari in Raising Steam? The only DoV I can think of is the double that Mr Pin and Mr Tulip find in "The Truth".

Do you mean the way that Vetinari behaves during the drinkies do with the football team, in "Unseen Academicals"?