Good vs. Evil:Can evil characters engender sympathy?

Yes evil characters can endanger sympathy because many acts done by evil characters aren’t always in the intentions of hurting people, however, they do engender sympathy. As seen in many books that the average audience reads because a character that may seem like a good person may end up evil, as a result of certain circumstances. In situations such as these the evil character also endangers sympathy.

For example throughout the Harry Potter series Professor Snape seems like he’s on Lord Voldemort’s side throughout the entire series until the seventh and final book. Professor Snape was once a part of Lord Voldemort’s squad of villains, however, his love for Harry’s mother (Lily Evans) has him supporting and saving Harry throughout the course of the books. Whereas to readers Snape is seen as an evil character who is trying to cause harm to Harry Potter, but turns out that he was and is helping Harry in his quest against Voldemort. This was only revealed after his death and engenders quite a significant amount of sympathy toward Snape. Although this example may be opposite to what I had mentioned above it still shows how a character that is evil can engender sympathy because their actions were an illusion to the true evil and all that he had done was with good intentions.

Another example in the same series is in the 4th book: Goblet of Fire where Professor Mad-Eye-Moodie is looked onto as a “good” character throughout the novel. However, all his intents were on hurting Harry and giving Voldemort a chance at revenge. This is revealed close to the end of the book where Mad-Eye-Moodie was a fake and wasn’t the real deal, in fact he was a death eater (Lord Voldemort’s squad of villains). This engenders sympathy toward the professor because of his foolishness to disguise as someone who was truly a “good” person.