Archetypal Villain

Words: 355
Pages: 2

In many archetypal hero novels, the villain wears a black cape, has fangs, or possesses some other unfortunate quality to identify them as “the bad guy.” As stated in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a villain is “a character in a story or play who opposes the hero.” Just as the hero represents a universal quality of good, the villain represents all bad, so much so, in fact, that the villain has many qualities that are the exact opposite of the hero. Even though they are purely evil, the villain in many works of fiction possesses some characteristic or quality in which the hero is lacking. This characteristic is what makes the villain so hard to defeat: he knows and is able to manipulate the hero’s weaknesses. In addition to this characteristic,