Post by demangler on Feb 17, 2011 15:57:54 GMT -5
Donaldson really excels at making every last character unlikeable. The Gap is a great series about wonderfully horrible people.
I get you. Wonderfully horrible applies to lots of stuff in those books. But every last character unlikeable?
I cannot help but answer this - I have to speak in the defense of some of my favourite characters.
Here we go.....
WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS
Hashi Lebwohl has to be the most obviously likable character in the books, for his honesty, cleverness, skill and humour. Not to mention his patience with the bumbling incompetence of just about everyone around him, and his ability to put the views of his enormous and usually trustworthy intellect to one side to trust that someone like Warden Dios might just be doing the right thing.
Min Donner is potentially the most unlikable, but she actually does have loyalty and good will for her people, and is absolutely selfless in protecting them.
Nick Succourso is the character that perhaps we are supposed to hate, but he is such a victim of his circumstances that you cannot help but feel sorry for him.
Angus Thermopyle is just a trapped animal - it is difficult to feel sorry for him because of his strength, and he has so little control over anything in the book, all he does is motivated not by evil, but by trying to avoid the consequences of the evil he has experienced. His early failures emphasise the scale of the problem and the hoplessness of his struggle - yet does he succeed in the end? Donaldson portrays this splendidly. Angus is the hero of the book.
Warden Dios is the overall plot driver - everything that happens in the book is to further his goal of saving humanity - I could go on about this, but he is perhaps the most purely good, from a moral point of vew, person in the book. What is not to like?
Holt Fastner - Evil, without a doubt. But I like him.
Morn Hyland - Easy not to like her - a rich kid from privileged background finds herself in a bad situation outside her experience, she is central to some of the point of views early on which gives us some empathy for her, but we soon see how much more heroically others deal with their horrors that we end up thinking that she is just a manipulative victim.
Mikka Vasaczk - Does so much to help Morn and her brother, utterly selfless - she even gives Nick much more slack than he deserves because of her own weakness perhaps but also because she sees who he could be if he could get over his issues. The direction she takes in some crises situations just inspires admiration.
Vector Shaheed - Likable. Full stop. His job in the book is to be likable and a friend to the friendless, never mind that he ultimately produces the solution to humanities Amnion problems.
Sorus Chatelain - Is evil. Who could like her? Almost every other character in the book has their bad qualities thrown into a context where we can relate to them and understand them - even forgive them, but not her.
Orn Vorbuld - He is not even a character really, but you can't like him. I suppose there is so little to him, and what he has is just destructive and selfish, that disliking him is automatic.
I am going to leave it there as I am just getting started.
I must say I am surprised at how well I remember the book. Donaldson certainly did a great job of creating memorable characters, love them or hate them.
dM
<edit> I forgot Godsen Frik - He is definitely unlikable. Weak, dishonest, stupid, he is Fasners puppet but he thinks he is in some kind of control. His willingness to manipulate othersand total selfishness mean that instead of empathizing with his situation you end up thinking he deserves it. <edit>