To have a bit of fun with the well-known first line of Pride and Prejudice: it is a truth universally acknowledged that Allison Pearl, when walking past any storm drain on any street, will feel fear’s chilly fingers crawl up her spine as she hears Pennywise say, “Hi, Georgie,” and instantly quicken her pace. I’m nearly 40 years old, and yet certain childhood fictional horror villains—like Pennywise from the novel It and Freddy Krueger from the A Nightmare on Elm Street film franchise—still send me running for the hills. But while these particular classic bad guys make me squirm, I, like most people, have vastly different reactions to other fictional villains.

My husband, for example, recently read Orwell’s 1984 for the first time. Just like Freddy and Pennywise, the unseen but looming Big Brother is “the bad guy,” but Big Brother’s presence and the sinister actions of the Thought Police didn’t give Daniel a jump scare or send him hiding under the covers. Instead, these villains evoked disgust, anger, and hatred in him, emotions that, somehow, are in stark contrast to the disgust, anger, and hatred we feel for the dream-terrorizing Freddy. On the other end of the dark side spectrum, there are villains I don’t hate at all. At different times during their character arcs, I’ve found myself sympathizing with, or even rooting for, the likes of Heathcliff, Loki, Walter White, Amy Dunne, and Gollum. Thinking this over on my shorter-than-expected walk, I realized that whether we love, hate, or can’t live without a particular fictional villain often comes down to a mysterious combination of their motivation and potential.

In a previous blog post on Gothic literature, I wrote that I find nothing scarier than a villain just as human as me. And a lot of times, I think my ability to identify with a character comes down to their motivation. Take Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.Many of his actions are cruel, vengeful, and abusive. Obsessed with revenge, he does everything he can to ruin and rule over his enemies’ lives, and his treatment of Isabella and Hareton is inexcusable. But after a childhood of abuse and then the rejection of his greatest love due to his social standing, I can’t help but feel a little satisfaction when Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights rich and well-positioned for payback. I understand why his actions turned hateful, and I’m forced to wonder if, in the same situation, I might’ve turned villain too. There’s a proverb in the Bible that says, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes…,” and with villains like Heathcliff, the writer skillfully makes his eyes the reader’s eyes as well.

And while being empathetic to one villain’s motivation may make us root for them, the motivation that strikes no strings of the heart makes us loathe another with the fire of a thousand suns. Take Joffrey Baratheon from George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Martin makes Joffrey’s motivation just as clear as Brontë made Heathcliff’s, but at no point am I rooting for anything other than for Joffrey to die a slow and agonizing death, because his motivation is simply to dominate everything and everyone around him—for no other reason than because he can. Ultimately, how human a villain’s motivation is helps determine the kind of villain they will be.

Another determinant of the reader or audience’s feelings toward a villain is their potential, and for me, I find that the cleverer the bad guy, the more they fall in that love-to-hate category. For example, look at the sociopathic but brilliant actions of Amy Dunne as she frames her husband for her own murder in the book Gone Girl. While I’m slightly sympathetic to Amy’s desire to pay her husband back for his infidelity, it wasn’t her motivation that kept me reading—it was the elaborate scope and ingenuity of her plan. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t rooting for Amy to “get away with it,” but with every genius stroke—like the perfectly staged kidnapping scene, the fake diary, the framing credit card purchases, and her manipulation of public opinion—I stuck around through every page asking, Is she really going to pull this off?

And sometimes it’s not the villain’s potential alone, but their potential versus the hero of the story. In a lot of ways, the villain makes the hero, and there’s something so satisfying when a hero meets his match. Watching the Joker face off with Batman in the film, The Dark Knight, is a unique experience because the Joker’s master strokes and Batman’s struggle to outwit him elevate both characters in the eyes of the audience.

Villains fascinate us because they show us the worst of ourselves, or what we might become under the right (or wrong) circumstances. Whether they’re masterminds, monsters, or misfits, the best villains make us feel something deep and uncomfortable. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why we can’t stop reading.

What do you think? Let me know and jump into the discussion below. And don’t forget to sign-up for the newsletter for more blog updates or join Allison’s Book Club to talk books!

And if you’re looking for a lighter, less villain-focused read, check out GLAZED SUSPICION!