Villains in literature. How Joanne K. Rowling succeeded in creating Lord Voldemort as the ultimate depiction of evil

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 15,0, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, language: English, abstract: The following work will firstly give a brief definition of the term ¿evil¿ and its representations in literature, secondly it will analyze Joanne Kathleen Rowling¿s depiction of evil in her Harry Potter-series by means of Lord Voldemort¿s development, actions and character on the basis of the storyline and her literary language in order to emphasize how she succeeded in creating the ultimate evil character. Afterwards, a brief comparison of Voldemort and two other antagonists, William Shakespeare¿s Iago and Suzanne Collins¿ President Snow will be elaborated to shortly delineate the commonalities of this characters and the development of villains in literature.

Although the last movie has been published in 2011 and the last book in 2007, Joanne Kathleen Rowling¿s Harry Potter-series still manages to be up-to-date, so that its main plot and leading roles have become some sort of general knowledge. Rowling succeeded in creating such a prepossessing and impressive fictional world, that it made her to one of the wealthiest women of the world. Despite the fact that the story itself prepossesses its readers, the characters that Rowling created are impressive and famous. Especially Rowling¿s antagonist Lord Voldemort tends to remain on the reader¿s and society¿s mind due to his immense cruelty.