The scariest villains in literature ever

The literary world is awash with scary fictional characters, but there has to be one whom you consider to be the most terrifying ever.

We are not just talking of Count Dracula’s I-will-suck –your blood type of scary. We are talking of the character that makes you shiver with the incomprehensible nature of human evil.

For a while, mine has been Big Brother from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. What is there not to be scared about a character from whom you cannot hide? But then again, because nearly all of the state surveillance imagined in this classic novel has already come to pass, with time, Big Brother is slowly becoming part of our psyche. Talk of normalizing the abnormal.

And how about Victor Frankenstein whose attempt to ‘create life’ is disastrously unsettling? Is he scary?Yes, very!

But the scariest, most villainous character ever, has to be Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights. This sinister character’s desire for revenge, initially, makes him an almost romantic hero ready to go the length to win over Catherine, his love.

Heathcliff, however, becomes increasingly sadistic, especially in his abuse of Isabella. Any sympathy that the reader may have had for him as a child tormented by Hindley Earnshaw evaporates to the thin air when he returns to Wuthering Heights a wealthy man ever more hell-bent on a vengeful warpath.

Heathcliff’s indefensible, endless sadism and failure to reform, against all expectations, makes him both a memorable and probably the scariest character in literature ever.

The following is an extract from Telegraph’s list of 50 Greatest Villains in Literature:

1.     O’Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell

2.     Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

3.     Mr. Hyde from Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

4.     Long John Silver from Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

5.     Iago from Othello, by William Shakespeare

6.     Satan from Paradise Lost, by John Milton

7.     Voldermort from the Harry Potter series by J. K Rowling

8.     Captain Hook from Peter and Wendy, by JM Barrie

9.     Moriarty from The Final Problem, by Arthur Conan Doyle

10.  Mr Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

So, who do you think is the scariest, most villainous character in literature, ever?