Why Do We Love Those Hateful Characters?

I picked up a book the other day at the library that is a little different from my normal reading selections. The story takes place in London in the early 1900’s. The back cover intrigued me because the main character is a woman physician who chooses to set up her practice among the London poor.

One of the main characters, and the man who becomes the physicain's love interest, is a gangster who has a reputation for extorting businesses, stealing, corruption, and all manner of other evil deeds. Yet, during a scene when he and his cronies are lifting a shipment of guns to be smuggled, I found myself rooting for the villain. When the watchman approached, I held my breath with the mobster as he narrowly escaped discovery.

What techniques did the author use to elicit such sympathy for a villain character? He revealed bits and pieces of backstory. He drew a picture of the life this man lived as a child and the traumatic events that shattered his world and contributed to his current behaviors.

The author uses the perpetrator’s point of view, putting us inside his head and making his motives and his law-breaking activities almost justifiable. Even though we know his crimes are wrong and harmful to others, we forget that in our desire to see the character overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of him accomplishing his goal.

The character has weaknesses. He has hardened his heart against relationships, yet the reader sees cracks in that wall of emotionless when we see him become attracted to the female physician who saves his life.

The reader also glimpses the villain through the eyes of those who love him, who knew him before he became a hardened criminal. He is viewed as a person worth saving.

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