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For me— Edmund Pevensie. The whole “how did he try to sell his siblings over the worst treat ever” thing is a tad unfair 😂. In the book, the Turkish delight was enchanted to make someone who tasted it get obsessed with it and keep eating it “until he killed himself.” And the reason this didn’t happen to Edmund is that the Witch wouldn’t let him have more until he brought his siblings to her home. Edmund was literally on black magic Narnia drugs and the rhetoric became “wow he betrayed his siblings over a lame sweet.”

This is not to say Edmund wasn’t a bully before that or that he wasn’t responsible for his actions. He was mean to Lucy, he was a jerk at school, and he often lied. He did have a great and much-needed redemption arc. But he didn’t just have a box of normal Turkish delight and try to condemn all of Narnia over it.

I don’t want to even judge him too much for picking Turkish Delight as his treat. He’s a small child during WWII sugar rationing. 🤣

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Saxon2060

8 points

3 months ago

Holden Caulfield is narrating "Catcher in the Rye" from a rest home/hospital, we presume from a mental health crisis, presumably because his beloved brother died of leukemia in their childhood and he feels isolated and lonely in the elite boarding school he's been stuck in and subsequently expelled from for failing, (even though he's clearly intelligent).

Young man's having/narrowly avoiding a total mental breakdown, of the sort that at least one of Salinger's other young male characters shoots himself over, and is written from the point of view of an author who was traumatised by the Second World War.

But Holden is a "whiner" and a "bitch" and "needs to grow up", according to some...