History ButtMonkey / Literature

* Peter David's ''SirAproposOfNothing''. For three whole books.

* ''SweetValleyHigh'': Jessica Wakefield, of all people. Her schemes blow up in her face, leaving her humiliated (though this is often deserved, given her malicious intentions). Her genuine efforts at improving herself (cooking classes, music lessons) end the same way. Every time she meets a guy she really likes, it falls apart. Everyone, even her own parents, blatantly favor her sister Elizabeth over her and said sister frequently lords her "perfection" over her.

** This is, of course, a reflection of the philosophy of Sade's that [[SickSadWorld virtuous people finish last]]. Every virtuous character in a story of Sade's is a complete Butt Monkey.

* Born as a deformed dwarf, having his own mother die bringing him into the world, growing up being reviled and hated by his father, having his first wife gang-raped by his father's garrison, becoming the laughing stock of Westeros despite being wise and kind ([[BlackAndGrayMorality or at least not cruel]]), falsely accused of murder and imprisoned [[spoiler: twice]], protecting a city with his life only gaining more scorn, getting half his nose cut off, denied of his birthright, forced into a second marriage with a woman who finds him repulsive, [[spoiler: finding his lover in his father's bed and becoming an exile wanted by the whole of Westeros after [[Theatre/OedipusRex killing both]]]], [[spoiler: becoming a broken down drunk in exile, and getting captured, sold into slavery and nearly fed to lions for a momentary laugh from the audience of the Meerenese arena]]. Tyrion Lannister from ''ASongOfIceAndFire'' is, without a doubt, one of the best examples of a dramatic ButtMonkey.
** Another character from the same series that also could definitely be considered a Butt Monkey would be Brienne of Tarth. She's an ugly woman warrior in an incredibly sexist world who has had to deal with one of her masters dying, another one mistakenly believing she betrayed them, being a suspect in a murder she didn't commit, attempted rape, getting put in a bear pit for [[PsychoForHire someone's]] sick amusement, and being constantly mocked. Not to mention her issues with [[ShipTease unrequited love]].

*** The entire Stark Family seems to be the Butt Monkey clan of Westeros.
**** Every time you ask "When will the next book come out?", George R. R. Martin kills a Stark. Please, won't you think of the Starks?

** Tyrion's sister, Cersei, is also this. She's beautiful, tough, resilient, brave, it's impossible not to like her. However she's sort of trying to be a MagnificentBitch but [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain failing miserably]]. She's spent her life living in fear of a prophecy that one day her life would basically fall apart and then she'd be ignominiously killed so all of her efforts are dedicated to protecting her children and escaping this prophecy through manipulative attempts at power-grabbing that ineveriably blow up in her face. As Petyr Baelish points out, while Cersei desires power, she has no idea how to wield it and while she thinks she is a player in the Game of Thrones, she usually just ends up being a pawn. However she does now have Gregor Clegane on her side so things should start looking up for her.

* Carrie White in Stephen King's ''{{Carrie}}'' early on is described as both heavily abused at home, school, and summer camp, as well as a perpetual screw-up.

* Rincewind, from Terry Pratchett's ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''. He doesn't just want to be left alone, he actually wants his life to be ''boring''. But due partly to being the [[CosmicPlaything pawn of Luck]], and partly to his own self-defeating cowardice, he always ends up in the middle of some gigantic disaster surrounded by people who want him dead.
** Lampshaded (hilariously) in ''Discworld/TheLastHero''.

** Also from the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels, the Bursar. He went insane, and accidents are constantly happening to him; if someone throws away something, you can bet that it's going to hit the Bursar. Mind you, he doesn't seem to notice.

* Neville Longbottom was very much the Butt Monkey for the first four ''Literature/HarryPotter'' books, being there mainly just as a source of comic relief. However he TookALevelInBadass in the fifth book and if you're laughing at him by the seventh book, you have a very weird sense of humour.

* Agrajag in ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' books has his fate intertwined with Arthur Dent's in a unique way. He has been reincarnated as a bowl of petunias, a baby rabbit, and a cricket spectator, not to mention countless flies and other bugs, all of which died at least in part due to Arthur Dent's actions. Agrajag suspects malice on Arthur's part, but Arthur insists it's just "the universe playing silly buggers with the pair of us."
** Reading carefully, it seems indeed ''every single thing'' for whose death Arthur is in any part responsible is an incarnation of Agrajag, and every single incarnation of Agrajag is killed at the hands of Arthur. It's understandable that he'd hold a grudge....

** Even though things work out for her in the end, Fanny Price of ''Literature/MansfieldPark'' would certainly count. She's constantly berated by her own relatives for coming from a poor family, despite doing nothing to antagonise them and is then relentlessly harassed by Henry Crawford, who just can't seem to accept she doesn't want to marry him.

** The people of the Riverlands suffer the most in the war. Their lands have been ravaged by the Lannisters who had House Clegane and the [[PsychoForHire Bloody Murmurs]] pillage every settlement in their path, leaving the Riverlands into a corpse filled wasteland.

** Life just seems to hate Severus Snape; his past isn't a cakewalk, to say the least.

* In Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder novel ''The Sins of the Fathers'', a young woman is raped and murdered by her male roommate, who is then immediately caught (covered in blood) by the police and hangs himself in his cell a day later. The woman's stepfather, who had been out of touch with her for a few years, hires Scudder to look into her life because he needs to understand how the crime happened (and the police, with such an open-and-shut case, have no reason to look into the circumstances any further). Scudder talks with a friend in the police department, and they both agree the stepfather is a "poor bastard." The cop points out how, even though a long police investigation and trial can be hard on a murder victim's family, it also gives them something to focus on while they adjust to the idea that their loved one is gone. But this stepfather just has everything -- his stepdaughter is dead, the killer is caught, and the killer is now dead too -- dumped on him all at once and has no idea how to deal with any of it.

* The titular character in ''Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day''.

** [[PluckyComicRelief Vaurien Scapegrace and his minion Thrasher]] are nothing but this. They don't actually affect the plot in any way, and keep showing up just to get humiliated by the heroes, or other villains.

** [[ThoseTwoBadGuys Vaurien Scapegrace and his minion Thrasher]] are nothing but this. They don't actually affect the plot in any way, and keep showing up just to get humiliated by the heroes, or other villains.

* Creator/PGWodehouse's [[Literature/JeevesAndWooster Bertie Wooster]] could easily be classed a Butt Monkey. He's forever insulted by everyone he knows, berated by his aunts, and is made to perform degrading errands by people who lean on ties of family or friendship to make him do those hideous tasks. Even Jeeves called him "mentally negligible".

** On the "minor character" front, Edmure Tully, Lady Catelyn's sweet-natured brother who had the misfortune to be born a total dingbat with bad judgment and worse luck. Directly or indirectly, his mistakes manage to [[spoiler: lose the war for Robb, get Robb killed, and ensure that his sister will never get her daughters back. He also misses the fact that his king and family are being murdered down the hall because he's too busy having sex, spends half a book standing on a gallows with a rope around his neck as the world's most useless hostage, can't even take a bath without someone threatening to put his baby in a catapult, and had a popular and Actually Pretty Funny song written about his erectile problems.]] Basically, if there's an opportunity for him to humiliate himself, Edmure will find it.

* Creator/FranzKafka: every protagonist of his ever written, every one, and he often put his characters out of their misery in the end.
* Roald Dahl's ''Literature/{{Matilda}}'' has Harry Wormwood, once Matilda works out how to get even with him without being found out.
* Harry Dresden. Practically the poster boy for IronWoobie and for good reason. His mother was murdered by magic as she gave birth to him, his father was apparently also murdered - though he appeared to have an aneurysm - when he was six, his adoptive father and teacher saw him as nothing more than a future EliteMook, his [[FirstLove 'first everything']] appears to turn on him and go bad leading to him appearing to kill her in the duel that kills his adoptive father. Oh, and he makes a deal with the third most powerful faerie in the Winter Court, after the two senior Queens, the Leanansidhe. Remember this, it'll come back later. Then he gets put on trial for murder and only survives because Ebenezar [=McCoy=] [[spoiler:(his grandfather)]] stands up for him. He is thereafter on probation. After he finally escapes probation, he has to deal with living in a musty basement, trying to do good and being looked down on as a freak and weirdo at best or a walking TykeBomb.

* Agrajag in ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' books has his fate intertwined with Arthur Dent's in a unique way. He has been reincarnated as a bowl of petunias, a baby rabbit, and a cricket spectator, not to mention countless flies and other bugs, all of which died at least in part due to Arthur Dent's actions. Agrajag suspects malice on Arthur's part, but Arthur insists it's just "the universe playing silly buggers with the pair of us."
** Reading carefully, it seems indeed ''every single thing'' for whose death Arthur is in any part responsible is an incarnation of Agrajag, and every single incarnation of Agrajag is killed at the hands of Arthur. It's understandable that he'd hold a grudge....
** Also, Marvin, as he seems to get himself stuck in many horrifyingly awful situations, including having his leg stolen for some universe-destroying ritual, having constant pain in half of his body, and being left behind on a deserted planet to literally ''wait until the end of the universe'' for his friends to arrive. It doesn't help either that he is programmed to be permanently depressed. And the worst part is, nobody else seems to care.

* Born as a deformed dwarf, having his own mother die bringing him into the world, growing up being reviled and hated by his father, having his first wife gang-raped by his father's garrison, becoming the laughing stock of Westeros despite being wise and kind ([[BlackAndGrayMorality or at least not cruel]]), falsely accused of murder and imprisoned [[spoiler: twice]], protecting a city with his life only gaining more scorn, getting half his nose cut off, denied of his birthright, forced into a second marriage with a woman who finds him repulsive, [[spoiler: finding his lover in his father's bed and becoming an exile wanted by the whole of Westeros after [[Theatre/OedipusRex killing both]]]], [[spoiler: becoming a broken down drunk in exile, and getting captured, sold into slavery and nearly fed to lions for a momentary laugh from the audience of the Meerenese arena]]. Tyrion Lannister from ''ASongOfIceAndFire'' is, without a doubt, one of the best examples of a dramatic ButtMonkey.
** Another character from the same series that also could definitely be considered a Butt Monkey would be Brienne of Tarth. She's an ugly woman warrior in an incredibly sexist world who has had to deal with one of her masters dying, another one mistakenly believing she betrayed them, being a suspect in a murder she didn't commit, attempted rape, getting put in a bear pit for [[PsychoForHire someone's]] sick amusement, and being constantly mocked. Not to mention her issues with [[ShipTease unrequited love]].
** Sam. Nothing good happens to Sam. It's never played comically, but you never want to hit the people who do it, because Sam deserves it.
*** The entire Stark Family seems to be the Butt Monkey clan of Westeros.
**** Every time you ask "When will the next book come out?", George R. R. Martin kills a Stark. Please, won't you think of the Starks?
** Theon Greyjoy. He gets ''no'' respect, not even from his own kinsmen. the universe just seems to twist itself into knots in a deliberate effort to ruin Theon's life.
** On the "minor character" front, Edmure Tully, Lady Catelyn's sweet-natured brother who had the misfortune to be born a total dingbat with bad judgment and worse luck. Directly or indirectly, his mistakes manage to [[spoiler: lose the war for Robb, get Robb killed, and ensure that his sister will never get her daughters back. He also misses the fact that his king and family are being murdered down the hall because he's too busy having sex, spends half a book standing on a gallows with a rope around his neck as the world's most useless hostage, can't even take a bath without someone threatening to put his baby in a catapult, and had a popular and Actually Pretty Funny song written about his erectile problems.]] Basically, if there's an opportunity for him to humiliate himself, Edmure will find it.
** Tyrion's sister, Cersei, is also this. She's beautiful, tough, resilient, brave, it's impossible not to like her. However she's sort of trying to be a MagnificentBitch but [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain failing miserably]]. She's spent her life living in fear of a prophecy that one day her life would basically fall apart and then she'd be ignominiously killed so all of her efforts are dedicated to protecting her children and escaping this prophecy through manipulative attempts at power-grabbing that ineveriably blow up in her face. As Petyr Baelish points out, while Cersei desires power, she has no idea how to wield it and while she thinks she is a player in the Game of Thrones, she usually just ends up being a pawn. However she does now have Gregor Clegane on her side so things should start looking up for her.
* Everyone other than the Bastard or the PFY in Simon Travaglia's BastardOperatorFromHell series of short stories.
* The whole point of ''Literature/{{Candide}}''. Everyone is a Butt Monkey.
* Justine, the title character of one of the Creator/MarquisDeSade's (in)famous works, is the ultimate embodiment of this trope. At every turn, she's subjected to abuse hidden under a mask of virtue. She is forced to become a sex-slave to monks, is locked up in a cave and abused, publicly humiliated and raped numerous times. And just when things begin to look up for Justine, she gets struck by lightening and killed. Butt Monkey indeed.
** This is, of course, a reflection of the philosophy of Sade's that [[SickSadWorld virtuous people finish last]]. Every virtuous character in a story of Sade's is a complete Butt Monkey.
** A critic once remarked that De Sade's novels have a kind of inverted karma: ''good'' acts end up hurting the actor. For instance, Justine's sister Juliette has no scruples whatsoever, and the one time she refuses to commit a crime it is because she is afraid of the consequences, not from any moral considerations. Nevertheless, by refusing to commit the crime she loses her favored place at court and spends much of the rest of the novel in poverty and misery, until by a long series of evil acts she finally regains her power and luxury. (What really clinches it is betraying her sister Justine, of course.)
* Many a Thomas Hardy protagonist, particularly Jude of ''Literature/JudeTheObscure'' and Tess in ''Literature/TessOfTheDUrbervilles''. Jude and Tess both begin as wholesome, virtuous innocents until about the fourth page of their respective books, in which a endless series of escalating tragedies designed to rob them of all hope begin because GodIsEvil and [[InherentInTheSystem Victorian morality stifles any hope of a freethinking life]]. When things do improve in some minor fashion, it is only to make the next tragedy all the more poignant. Thomas Hardy biographers have tried and failed to come up with a reason for his unrelenting grimness; perhaps a contemporary review of ''Jude the Obscure'' sums the case up best by saying that, "He is depressing because he himself is somewhat depressed."
* Mr Bagthorpe of ''The Bagthorpe Saga''. Yes, he brings a lot of it on himself, but fact remains he's bedeviled by more disasters, wrong bank statements, goats and awful relatives than anyone else in children's literature. If he doesn't break his arm trying to stand on his head he's accidentally bidding for hundreds of pounds of junk in auctions. And he's suspected of being a terrorist and murdering his wife in the later books. To quote, "I am the archetypal can carrier of all time!"

* In Creator/JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' (and the individually published ''Literature/TheChildrenOfHurin''), Túrin Turambar gets cursed by [[BigBad Morgoth]] when he is eight. He gets sent to safety and never sees either of his parents again, he runs away from his foster father the King of Doriath after sort-of-accidentally killing someone, he kills his best friend after he shows up trying to help him, his overconfidence causes the fall of [[spoiler: Nargothrond]], he fails to rescue the woman who loves him, (and him rescuing her was his ''other'' best friend's dying wish), and when he finally falls in love with someone else, gets married, and gets her pregnant, she turns out to be [[spoiler: his sister Niënor]]. "O master of doom by doom mastered, O happy to be dead" indeed.
** There's also Bombur from ''Literature/TheHobbit'', who is a more classic comedic example.

* Most Creator/TomHolt main characters have things go hideously wrong for them more or less nonstop. Everything from jackass parents to being a pawn in century-old {{GambitRoulette}}s to [[spoiler: ''having the Queen of the Fey wipe your girlfriend's memory of you''.]] At the end of the story, they are usually given a lot of money and/or a vast region of land somewhere on the other side of the world as a karmic payoff for putting up with vast amounts of misery.

* Peter David's ''SirAproposOfNothing''. For three whole books.
* Nick Chopper (the Tin Woodsman) was the Butt Monkey of the Literature/LandOfOz. Ordinary Munchkin woodcutter, falls for a girl and wants to marry her. Problem: the girl, her family, or both (continuity wasn't Baum's strong suit) work for the Witch of the East. So, the Witch puts a spell on Nick's axe. When he tries to use it, he ends up dismembering himself. Adding insult to injury, the Witch dangled his hacked-off limbs from her broom like a bad pair of fuzzy dice. Oh, the tinner always came along and replaces his hacked-off parts with tin, but Nick was more machine than man by the time Dorothy found him. The reason he wanted a heart in the first place was so that he could go back to his girl and be a proper husband for her!
** Now here's where the Butt Monkey part kicks in. In ''Tin Woodsman of Oz'', he sets it upon himself to find out what became of Nimmie-Amiee. He finds that she had taken up with another man, Captain Fyter (who was cursed like he was, but isn't much bothered about the lack of a heart). He finds the tinner, who either owed the Witch a favor, was working for her, and possibly both. The tinner now has some "magic glue", and set about making new creations from it. His "first and finest" was a creature named Chopfyt, made from the body parts of both men. Topping it all off? Nimmie-Amiee married Chopfyt to essentially get the best of both worlds.

* Bill in ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''. First he's catapulted out of a chimney, then Alice is kind of mean to him when he's part of the jury.

* Penlan, aka "Jinxie", from the ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' series. Her bad luck hasn't killed her yet, heck, she even got promoted. Addtionally, she's rather popular with the rest of the 597th as it's believed that all the bad luck in her squad gets attracted to her and leaves everyone else alone. From the [[OverlyLongGag what Cain has said]], it really does work out for her.

* Juro in ''Literature/{{Krabat}}'' most of the time. [[ObfuscatingStupidity He rolls with it]] and to him it is never mean...

* Tanith Low from ''Literature/SkulduggeryPleasant'' by Derek Landy. She was meant to be killed off in the first book but the publishers said it was too depressing so Landy was forced to keep her in. He wasn't pleased about that. Now as punishment for surviving, in every book she gets tortured in some way. Now she's possessed by an evil spirit and has eloped with a psychopathic hitman. She hasn't been seen since.
** Fletcher Renn is traditionally on the receiving end of insults and jibes and got dumped by his beloved girlfriend, [[JerkSue Valkyrie Cain]] in book 6 though he did get a BigDamnHeroes moment at the end of the book, saving her from the clutches of a {{Yandere}} vampire.

* Similarly used in ''Literature/{{Redshirts}}''. ''Intrepid's'' astrogation officer Kerensky has quite a track record of nearly dying, then being all healed up by the next week. [[spoiler:As it turns out, that's because he's the ButtMonkey of a TV series in another timeline whose plots are fucking with the ''Intrepid'' via NegativeSpaceWedgie.]]
* ''Literature/TrappedOnDraconica'': Ritchie is treated as such by his owner, Kalak, but when it comes to his inability to roll his 'r's, he's this to everyone.
* ''SweetValleyHigh'': Jessica Wakefield, of all people. Her schemes blow up in her face, leaving her humiliated (though this is often deserved, given her malicious intentions). Her genuine efforts at improving herself (cooking classes, music lessons) end the same way. Every time she meets a guy she really likes, it falls apart. Everyone, even her own parents, blatantly favor her sister Elizabeth over her and said sister frequently lords her "perfection" over her.
* In the ChivalricRomance ''Cleges'', the impoverished Sir Cleges received miraclous cherries at Christmas and went to give them to the king to mend his fortunes. Three royal officials each demand a third of his reward to let him in. When he does so, the king wishes to reward him. He tells the king that the proper reward is thirty blows, and then explains. The king gives his officials the blows and then rewards Cleges's wife for being so faithful to him in his poverty. Porters and other offficials that could keep ministrels from the court are often treated like this in romance -- given that MostWritersAreWriters.
* Carrie White in Stephen King's ''{{Carrie}}'' early on is described as both heavily abused at home, school, and summer camp, as well as a perpetual screw-up.

** On the "minor character" front, Edmure Tully, Lady Catelyn's sweet-natured brother who had the misfortune to be born a total dingbat with bad judgment and worse luck. Directly or indirectly, his mistakes manage to [[spoiler: lose the war for Robb, get Robb killed, and ensure that his sister will never get her daughters back. He also misses the fact that his king and family are being murdered down the hall because he's to busy having sex, spends half a book standing on a gallows with a rope around his neck as the world's most useless hostage, can't even take a bath without someone threatening to put his baby in a catapult, and had a popular and Actually Pretty Funny song written about his erectile problems.]] Basically, if there's an opportunity for him to humiliate himself, Edmure will find it.

* Carrie White in Stephen King's "Literature/Carrie" early on is described as both heavily abused at home, school, and summer camp, as well as a perpetual screw-up.

* Harry Dresden. Practically the poster boy for IronWoobie and for good reason. His mother was murdered by magic as she gave birth to him, his father was apparently also murdered - though he appeared to have an aneurysm - when he was six, his adoptive father and teacher saw him as nothing more than a future EliteMook, his [[FirstLove 'first everything']] appears to turn on him and go bad leading to him appearing to kill her in the duel that kills his adoptive father. Oh, and he makes a deal with the third most powerful faerie in the Winter Court, after the two senior Queens, the Leanansidhe. Remember this, it'll come back later. Then he gets put on trial for murder and only survives because Ebenezar McCoy [[spoiler: his grandfather]] stands up for him. He is thereafter on probation. After he finally escapes probation, he has to deal with living in a musty basement, trying to do good and being looked down on as a freak and weirdo at best or a walking TykeBomb.

** Poor Mallory! [[http://community.livejournal.com/bsc_snark/39867.html HeresAList]]