Hello and Happy Holiday Break! I hope everyone has been able to enjoy some time off. I have been grading like crazy and getting ready for when we come back. On that note…Heroes & Villains, your homework for the break….
There have been many villains throughout literature, movies, history and so on. Who would you consider to be the #1 Villain? When I asked myself this question, I actually had quite a hard time trying to come up with an answer. When you are looking across the board there are just so many to choose from. I toyed with the idea of one of the killers from the Television show “Dexter,” and then I contemplated a character from a recent novel I read. One thing remained, I kept going back to a novel I am reading right now, “In the Garden of the Beasts.” It is a novel about the start of WWII and a family that moved to Berlin right at the start of the war. So, in the end, I go back to a name we have mentioned in class a few times; Adolf Hitler. Yes, he shows leadership and oratorical skills that render him someone to be respected in some ways, but ultimately, I would have to conclude that he is a villain, and in my eyes, the #1 Villain.
Sample response: Hitler was selfish in trying to push his ideals on everyone and ruthless in the way that he went trying to achieve them. He treated people cruelly killed them for the sake of trying to reach a personal goal; an Aryan race – a master race. The people that he murdered, with the help of his SS Soldiers, had done nothing to him, nor the people that assisted him and followed his lead. He allowed people like Josef Mengele to do cruel and unthinkable experiments on prisoners of the camps. His lack of emotion and cruel and horrific treatment of the Jewish race, and many others at the time, are what lead me to choose him as my #1 Villain.
But what about you? Who is your #1 Villain? Your homework is to choose someone, or character, that you can, and will, defend as your #1 Villain. Think about what we have defined a villain as and fully support your response. Type your response as a comment to this post. You will need to create a login/screenname. PLEASE DO NOT POST USING YOUR ACTUAL NAME.
Happy posting! And have a Happy New Year!