Though Wagner, who died in 1883, was not around to see his music embraced by the Nazis, the operas are not exempt from the dark currents of his personal beliefs, including the "Ring" and "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg," with their depictions of sniveling, vindictive characters seemingly modeled on Jews.
Claire Bloom did, and her ex-husband, Philip Roth, retaliated by turning her into a vindictive fictional character in his next novel (see the related box at left).
The deceitful, suspicious, vindictive part?
Maybe some day another book will emerge, showing more of this humbler Rudy, a counterpoint to the vindictive, self-aggrandizing character presented to us here.
A buccaneer of his own stamp, the notably aggressive agent Andrew Wylie, with whom Roger had an ambivalent (mostly antagonistic) relationship, spoke at Roger's memorial service, summing him up as "a magnificent character: vindictive, raucous, willful.
"She is nervous," Joseph Heller writes, as the main character Bob Slocum, "spiteful, embittered and vindictive" behind her "thin-lipped smile of calculating villainy... she must continue to agitate, like some dark and moody burrowing creature with a drive to undermine and destroy".
The character is as vindictive as her husband but in her own way.
Here is a thoroughly unlikable character, opportunistic, mean spirited, vindictive and self-absorbed: Poppea magnified, really.
Is it an accurate character study or a vindictive hatchet job playing on racist and sexist stereotypes?
Russell called Jesus' vindictive nature a defect in his moral character in that Jesus in the Gospels believed in the everlasting punishment of hell, which Russell felt that no one who is "really profoundly humane can believe in".
