Literature / Heel Realization

Heel Realizations in Literature.

Adventure Hunters: Ryvas wanted to use golems to end the loss of human life in wars. When he discovers that the golems are just as alive and sentient as himself, he surrenders and peacefully goes to jail.
Almost Perfect:
- Logan has two. The first is when he realizes how much he overreacted when Sage came out to him as transgender. He realizes that she didn't really lead him on or do anything to deceive him besides hiding her assigned gender, which he had no right to know anyway, and which she told him as soon as their relationship started to move past platonic. Later, he dumps her when Laura finds out she's trans because he's afraid word will get out and people will think he's a faggot, which leads to her getting violently beaten and hospitalized by a transphobic boy. Logan is angry at himself for jerking her around and resolves to stand by her no matter what.
- Sage's dad never accepts her as a woman, but he does eventually feel guilty about how horribly he treated her, and especially for telling her that he'd rather see her dead than wearing a dress.
At the end of The Amy Virus, Cyan's mother admits she was too scared to stand up to her emotionally and financially abusive husband. She gets a divorce, takes full custody of their daughter, and promises to make amends to the people she's hurt.
Rachel of Animorphs has one after she threatens to kill David's parents.
Lale fights this with all her might for awhile in The Assassins of Tamurin, until the crimes she realizes "Mother" has committed get personal.
In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, James Taggart is helping to torture John Galt, and admits the latter's refusal to cry out is making him upset. When he realizes the significance of this — that he wants a man to die screaming in pain, even knowing that the man in question is the only one that can keep Taggart alive when civilization finally collapses — it dawns on him that he himself is evil; not just irresponsibly selfish, mind, which is a trait that is treated with grudging sympathy by the novel's morality, but actively bite-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face self-destructively malicious. At this point, he goes insane.
Atonement gives one to Briony, the narrator, upon the realization that her actions sent an innocent man to prison.
A mild version occurs in A Brother's Price when Ren explains to Jerin that he is allowed to say 'no' to women. She mentions that she probably sounds "quite the hypocrite", as she was quite insistent in her efforts to seduce Jerin.
A Christmas Carol is essentially one long heel realization by Scrooge.
A Court of Thorns and Roses: Lucien refers to himself as "the villain in [Feyre's] narrative," upon seeing how she lives in Night Court.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld:
- In Witches Abroad, Lily Weatherwax ruled with an iron fist in order to make fairy stories come true (up to and including imprisoning a toymaker who serially failed to whistle as he worked) and didn't realize that this made her the bad one until her final confrontation with her sister. She goes to her not quite death still insisting she's the good one, but Granny's insistence otherwise has rattled her. Granny, though, has on multiple occasions made a point of saying that only people who don't know better can be bad; if you know the difference between right and wrong, you can't choose wrong. A position that is, incidentally, cribbed wholesale from Socrates.
- Subverted in Wyrd Sisters when Granny Weatherwax forces the monstrous queen of Lancre to see her True Self. Instead of repenting, the queen declares that given the chance to start over she would've done everything the same, only harder. She then suffers a Karmic Death...sort of. Which would make the above point "if know the difference... and are sane..."
- This is also a theme in Going Postal, which focuses on the redemption of the main character, Moist von Lipwig, a professional conman. In the process, the novel subverts the trope Loveable Rogue by constantly pointing out to Moist that his past crimes were just that: crimes, with far-reaching negative consequences for many people, up to and including his love interest, who lost her job at a bank as a result of one of his cons.
  That had been a good day, Moist thought. At least, up until now it had been a good day.
The eponymous Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files has this a few times:
- Has one of these that he confesses to the avatar of his subconscious when a photocopy of the Fallen Angel Lasciel takes residence in his head. His subconscious points out that Harry really doesn't have a choice, and that taking the high road means everyone dies. He then pointed out that Harry has the capacity to do good with the evil he agreed to working with. Later, Harry and Michael discuss this somewhat.
- Then, Lasciel's copy has one of these. To emphasize, Harry is so stubborn that he got the shadow of a Fallen Angel to turn back to good.
- Later, when Harry is dead in Ghost Story, he realizes what his decisions in the previous book did to his friends, especially Molly. It turns out that accepting a devil's bargain in front of your partially-reformed warlock wizardling apprentice is a bad idea, and that she learns from your example.
- In Battle Ground (2020) Harry (and by extension the readers) get a harsh reminder that despite how awesome some of them like Vadderung are and the humanization that the likes of Mab have gotten, that they are called MONSTERS for a reason. During the post-battle meeting, Harry looks around and realizes none of them give a damn about the dead and it finally hits Harry that Ramirez was right that, while not one himself and not completely by choice, Harry has found himself aligned with the inhuman members of The Accorded Nations.
Enemy Coast Ahead by Guy Gibson, leader of the bombing raid made famous by The Dam Busters, contains a downplayed example. Gibson didn't consider himself to be a villain, but he certainly had his doubts about being entirely in the right:
The fact that people … might drown had not occurred to us. But we hoped that the dam wardens would warn those living down below in time, even if they were Germans. No one likes mass slaughter and we did not like being the authors of it. Besides, it brought us in line with Himmler and his boys.
In Fengshen Yanyi the last emperor of Shang, King Zhou, spends the entire novel victim of his temper and his desires and, when corrupted by the Vixen Spirit inside Daji, spirals into a cruel and wasteful edonist whose petty wickedness ends up uniting his own subjects against him, supporting the virtuous King Wu of Zhou instead. By the time the Zhou armies have reached his palace and managed to subdue and kill Daji and the other two evil spirits, a distraught King Zhou wanders the courts of his palace, assaulted by the ghosts of the people he tortured and killed until he eventually realize the full extent of his cruelty and how he brought ruin upon himself and the empire. Having realized the full extent of his errors, he puts on the full imperial garments, enters his personal mansion and orders to a loyal officer to set the building aflame, with him inside. Such gesture is so surprising and solemn that King Wu has a genuine Alas, Poor Villain moment and King Zhou's soul is admitted among the 365 souls in the Fengshen List to become a deity.
Mrs. Granger in Frindle, after overreacting to a student's creative attempt to invent a new word, realizes that her actions have placed her in the role of the villain and uses this status to help the new word along.
"The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield is about the main character, Laura, having one of these and realizing just how privileged her life is.
In John C. Wright's The Golden Transcedence, Gannis realizes that while he is technically not guilty of any crimes, his behavior has been petty, underhanded, deceitful, and disloyal, and he will be — quite justly — shunned for it.
Scarlett O'Hara has many moments like this in Gone with the Wind — after her second husband is killed and she realizes what an awful wife she was, after her daughter is killed and she realizes that she's alienated all her old friends and has no one to turn to, and after Melanie dies and she realizes she's been an awful friend to her (aside from being thoroughly oblivious and/or ungrateful to all that Melanie has done for her, every nice thing she did for Melanie was to curry favor with Melanie's husband Ashley), and when she finally realizes that Rhett loves her and what an awful wife she's been to him as well. Unfortunately, it's always too late for her to make amends to anyone — Frank and Melanie are dead, and Rhett finally gives up on trying to win her affections.
In Good Omens, Adam Young realizes he's done something terrible when he uses his powers on his friends to make them obey him. Thankfully, this helps him to ultimately become an Anti Anti Christ.
The Guns of the South has Nate Cauldell pull a heel realization when after teaching a black man and realizing that the man is both extremely smart and wants to better himself he realizes that his landlady, who's both illiterate and dumb as a post could buy the man in a heartbeat. As Nate himself says "Damned if there's any justice in that." The south as a whole has one when they find books showing how the civil war really went and learn that not only were blacks just as capable as whites but that they'd be seen as the villains in the future.
Harry Potter
- This happened to Dumbledore after the death of his sister.
- Ditto on Dudley, who realizes exactly what he has become when attacked by Dementors in book 5.
- Also happened to Snape after his actions resulted in Lily Potter's death. Snape's realization came a year earlier, when he realized that Voldemort's reaction to the prophecy Snape had brought him would include killing Lily.
In Heralds Of Rhimn, Atevia turns face as she realizes that the fey that she’d helped to arrest never had glamour magic to begin with, and weren’t ever a danger to the general population. The final chapter of Book Three begins with her quietly revising her personal code of honor, understanding that she and her colleagues are no longer on the same page.
Honor Harrington:
- Jack McBride in Torch of Freedom comes to the conclusion halfway through the book that promoting slavery and plotting to take over the known galaxy is bad, and reacts by setting up a defection by a major researcher and then blowing up the Gamma center.
- In other examples from the Harrington-verse, Alfredo Yu realizes what kind of sociopaths the Masadans he's been ordered to assist really are and wants nothing more to do with it (nor evidently do a good portion of his fellow Havenite crew). This eventually becomes a recurring theme with other Havenite characters until their second revolution and the overthrow of the Pierre dictatorship.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; after seeing the Whos still happy after he stole all their presents and decorations, the Grinch "puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore" until the True Meaning of Christmas finally hits him.
This is the source of the title of I Am Legend. The protagonist is indiscriminately killing the vampires who have reformed and learned to control their urges and realizes at the end he has become a monster to them.
The In Death series: There is this one lawyer in Ceremony in Death who defends one of the Satanic cult leaders that Eve is trying to take down. This lawyer happens to be a cult member himself. When Eve shows crime scene photos of a murdered cult member, the cult leader acts all "Meh", and the lawyer can only sit there and stare at the photos. Eve tips him off that she knows about his involvement and that he should think long and hard about what to do next. Later, when the lawyer is by himself, he ends up experiencing a Heel Realization, where he realizes that ever since he joined the cult he's been having blackouts...and in one of those blackouts, the cult member in the photos was murdered in a sacrifice! Who knows what else happened in those blackouts? He ends realizing that he is in big trouble, and decides to pull a Heel–Face Turn... only to get murdered shortly afterward.
In the novelette "El Inquisidor De Mexico", after Sara dies, Don Domingo realises how he had acted like a fanatic and gives up his job as an inquisitor to instead become a good Catholic, helping the poor and the sick.
In the novelization of the Magic: The Gathering story Urza's Saga, we have the Knight Templar archangel Radiant, whose last words are the startled "I'm the mad one!"
Les Misérables :
- Jean Valjean had his Heel Realization after unthinkingly robbing a small child, right after Bishop Myriel had given him everything he'd owned, which got him to start taking his oath to the bishop seriously, and, ... you know the rest.
- Much, much later, Javert has his own Heel Realization when Valjean rescues him from certain death at the barricade. Javert subsequently witnesses this criminal attempt to save Marius' life and offer himself willingly as Javert's prisoner. He realizes that the world isn't as black-and-white as he had believed. He doesn't take it so well.
In Lolita, Humbert finally realizes just how terrible his treatment of Dolores was when he meets her again as a pregnant, married teenager and realizes that he robbed her of the chance to have a normal, happy childhood. In what appears to be a rare moment of genuine guilt on his behalf, he just gives her the money she asks him for without demanding anything in return.
The Misfit of Demon King Academy: Emilia Lud(o)well looks down on hybrids, refusing to acknowledge how powerful they can get (such as series protagonist Anos) and attempts murder on several of them, claimingthem to be knowledge thieves who eavesdrop on her classes. Following her Forced Transformation into a half-demon, a group of pure-blooded students assault her, claiming she's a vulgar hybrid with vulgar thoughts. This is one factor in Emilia's realization of how biased her prior beliefs towards hybrids were.
In Poster Girl the protagonist Sonya Kantor is the former poster girl of the Delegation, a tyrannical regime, having lost everyone close to her to the rebellion that overthrew it she starts the story very much still believing that the Delegation were the good guys. As the story progresses she realized more and more just how evil the regime truly was and the role her own father played in it specifically.
Lord Wyldon, the training master in Protector of the Small, undergoes this in the third book when two misogynist squires he had favored fail their Ordeal of Knighthood, with Vinson being exposed as a rapist and Joren dying because he was so inflexibly bigoted the Ordeal shattered him. Wyldon knows he had a hand in their failures by not correcting their flaws, on top of which, he realizes that history will mark Keladry's tenure as his greatest achievement—when he had fully intended to send her home unjustly after her probationary period, and his sense of honor only just won out. Faces with these facts, he immediately resigns as training master.
In The Queen's Thief, Attolia Irene is known as a tyrant who hangs traitors upside-down from the walls of her palace in order to maintain sovereign rule over her patriarchal country. When she captures Eugenides in her palace at the beginning of The Queen of Attolia, she follows the suggestion of her Mede ambassador to apply the traditional punishment for thieves rather than execution. It does not provide her with the satisfaction she'd hoped, she refuses to let anyone in her court mock his pain around her, and eventually she asks herself outright when she had sunk so low that she cut off a boy's hand.
A halfway one from The Secret River: Thornhill says that he is "not a bad man", but is doing "something only the worst of men could do".
Seven Years Awesome Luck: Kester does some serious soul-searching after getting a taste of his own medicine (from his son Landon), and reflects on his life with growing dissatisfaction. He ends up freeing the people he's turned into animals and then giving up using magic entirely.
Sir Apropos of Nothing has a variation: he's not the villain, but instead he's the weird side character to someone else's journey. He eventually kills the hero and takes over his duties, to disastrous results. Then in The Woad to Wuin, when he wakes up from a coma, he realizes what "he's" done while he was "sleeping" and is scared out of his wits. When he realizes the same force that controlled him then makes him indestructible... well, he falls into the evil well face-first.
- Though he'd been dangling just over the abyss to begin with, really. Kind of a self-serving-but-not-completely-evil-bastard/heel turn.
Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Roland Sullivan in Lethal Justice apparently experienced this after Alexis Thorne was sent to prison. The good news is that it left him pretty wrecked up. The bad news is that it was an Ignored Epiphany for him.
Star Wars Legends in general is full of Punch-Clock Villain Imperials who are conscripts or professional soldiers, who become appalled at various Imperial atrocities and decide that they didn't sign up to murder civilians. The destruction of Alderaan was a major driver for this.
- In Allegiance, a stormtrooper refuses to fire on unarmed civilians, deliberately shooting to miss. Later he thinks back on how much he looked up to the Empire as a kid, when it came down on the Space Pirates who used to raid his homeworld, and how he joined the stormtrooper corps and served for ten years because it meant making that same kind of difference. But the Empire itself seemed to sour—there was that time he and the other stormtroopers forced a town to stand out in the pouring rain while their identities were checked and rechecked, there was that fanatical obsession with finding and killing Rebels which let other problems go unchecked, there was the promotion of murderers like Tarkin, there were things like the Imperial Security Bureau, and there was Alderaan. After sort of accidentally killing an ISB officer, he and his True Companions steal a ship and go on the run, and end up helping people and finding that Good Feels Good as they try to figure out what to do. But they don't stop being stormtroopers, and they don't join the Rebellion.
- In the novel Choices of One, these stormtroopers are kidnapped by Thrawn and end up in his offshoot, the Empire of the Hand. The Empire of the Hand, judging by Survivor's Quest and the short story "Fool's Bargain," is apparently exactly what the stormtroopers used to think that the Empire was. Given that both of those feature stormtroopers who think for themselves and can make moral decisions, it's not surprising. They end up forming a sort-of vigilante group that hunts down pirates and ends up helping Mara Jade expose corruption within the Empire. They called themselves the Hand of Judgment until Mara Jade saved them from getting killed for treason, then told them that there was only one Hand in the Empire, and it was her, the Emperor's Hand. They lost the name, but haven't quit hunting lawbreakers yet.
- Death Star has most of its viewpoint characters, all of them on the Death Star, realize this either slowly or after Alderaan. One of whom is the head gunner. His arc is a powerfully moving tragedy.
- The novelization of Revenge of the Sith features Anakin post-scarring confronting what he's done since turning to the dark side, having previously convinced himself it wasn't really his fault. It causes him to fully go over the Despair Event Horizon and internalize himself as Darth Vader.
  You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—-and there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.
  That it was all you. Is you. Only you.
  You did it. You killed her.
  You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were only thinking about yourself... it is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith-—because now your self is all you will ever have.
- In Darth Plagueis, Sith records speak of a Dark Lord of the Sith sometime between the Battle of Ruusan^note and the prequel period named Darth Gravid, who became disillusioned with the Dark Side of the Force and planned to forsake the Sith for the light side. To that end he started destroying the Sith Order's records and got pretty far before his apprentice Darth Gean killed him. Darth Plagueis estimates that Gravid's actions set the Sith back by centuries.
- In Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, stormtrooper Davin Felth is appalled at the murders of the Jawa tribe and the Lars family (and then the flippant killing of a Jawa who attacks them in the street with a nonfunctional blaster by a squadmate). During the hangar firefight, Felth shoots his own CO in the back when the latter draws a bead on Han Solo, and starts making plans to defect to the Rebellion.
In The Stormlight Archive:
- Szeth-son-son-Vallano is made Truthless for the crime of claiming that the Voidbringers have returned. As Truthless, he is granted a magical weapon of astonishing power but forced to obey the orders of whoever holds his Oathstone. Before long, he has been forced to kill thousands in the service of his master and has started wars that will kill millions more. Then, at the climax of the second book, he learns the awful truth: he was right. The Voidbringers are returning. Szeth is not Truthless. And all those numberless deaths are absolutely his fault.
- In Edgedancer, upon seeing the Everstorm create the Voidbringers, Nale realizes that the Desolation has already come and in his attempt to prevent it, he's been trying to destroy what might be humanity's last hope of survival. He doesn't take it well, to put it mildly.
In The Sword of Good, this forms the climax of the story. Hirou is confronted with the fact that his allies have committed murder and torture, that the status quo is blatantly unequal, and that he has no good reason to rule the realm other than that a wizard told him his parents were royalty. The so-called "Lord of Dark", on the other hand, is actively trying to make things better, not just for the so-called "Bad Races" (actually victims of Fantastic Racism), but for everyone.
Till We Have Faces spends its second half working towards this, with Queen Orual gaining revelation after revelation that complicates her perceptions of herself. It culminates in her long-awaited chance to read her accusation against the gods ... but it comes out the way her inner self meant it, not the way she wrote it.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Wide-Eyed Idealist The Professor Aronnax is truly happy to travel in the Nautilus making submarine research, but after he witnesses Captain Nemo crossing the Moral Event Horizon, Aronnax realizes the true price of his travels with Captain Nemo:
"He had made me, if not an accomplice, at least an eyewitness to his vengeance! Even this was intolerable."
Ian Hunter of The Unicorn Chronicles spends the first book, plus a great deal of flashback, being on the side of his great-great-and so on- grandmother, who is trying to destroy luster and the unicorns, all to 'rescue' his daughter. Upon finding her, she yells at him for hurting her friends, and after he gets dumped in the middle of nowhere, he realizes that Beloved is a monster and he's been on the wrong side for the past ten or so years.
Universal Monsters: The version of Herr Henry Frankenstein from book 6 seems to have already undergone his, and begs the teens and Detective Turner to help him stop Dr. Pretorius. Subverted when it turns out to be an act and he turns on the teens as they arrive at Goldstadt Mansion.
Warhammer 40,000:
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Traitor General, Sturm, his memory partially recovered, regards himself as deeply injured by his treatment at the hands of the Imperial forces. However, as he recovers, he realizes that he had forgotten his acts that inspired it and that he deserves to die. (Which is more than he realized, with all his memories, at the end of Necropolis.)
- In Ben Counter's Horus Heresy novel Galaxy In Flames, after Abaddon and Aximand set out to lure Loken and Torgaddon to their deaths, Torgaddon points out to Aximand that he has doubt in his eyes — which doesn't keep him from killing him, but he sobs afterwards and speaks of how they had been their brothers. Abaddon thinks he needs to be watched.
- In Graham McNeill's Fulgrim, Fulgrim realizes how great his betrayal is when he is fighting Ferrus Manus; his sword gets him to kill Ferrus Manus anyway, saying he will kill him otherwise, and then, when Fulgrim says "What Have I Done", it lets him realize the depths of his crime, and that his view of Ferrus Manus had been formed by spiteful misinterpretation of his deeds.
- While we're on this, Sarpedon of the Soul Drinkers (another Ben Counter work) comes to the terrifying realization at the end of Soul Drinker, upon finding out that his Chapter have essentially become Chaos Marines (although, had it not been for Chaos mind-befuddling, the mutations would have provided a pretty damn big clue). Having realized this, Sarpedon hauls himself and his Chapter back from the brink of Chaos just in time and kills the Daemon responsible.
- In James Swallow's Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, Sachiel comes into Inquisitor Stele's rooms when forbidden, and realizes the man is working for Chaos, and so Sachiel and everyone else has been Chaos-tainted. (Nothing Laser-Guided Amnesia can't fix, though.) During the single combat between Rafen and Arkio, he realizes it again, and this time Inquisitor Stele murders him.
- In one of the Iron Warriors short stories, the renegade Space Marine Ardaric Vaanes realizes that yes, he's become a Traitor Marine. At first, he doesn't care.
In Warrior Cats, Ivypool realizes what the Dark Forest — which she's been training with and working for — is all about after seeing Tigerstar talking about destroying the forest.
Pyotr Fursenko from the Dale Brown novel Warrior Class serves as the lead aerospace engineer for the Big Bad Pavel Kazakov. Detached from the atrocities by his distance from the fighting, the evil of his boss finally sinks in when he acts as Guy in Back on a bombing run on the German embassy in Albania, complete with civilian protesters surrounding it.
This is the central point in The Wave (1981), where a teacher wants to show his class how Nazi Germany came to be... and it all goes horribly right as they really begin to resemble Nazis. Various people have their Heel Realizations throughout the book, including the whole class at the end.
In the book Wicked, Elphaba eventually picks up on her Wicked Witch role.
In Harry Turtledove's Alternate History Worldwar series, this happens to Panzer Commander of the Wehrmacht Heinrich Jäger when an old Jewish man shows him the bullet hole in his neck and tells him the story of how he got it. Heinrich had heard the rumors before then, but he hadn't believed in them. The third book sums it up nicely:
What Skorzeny didn't get and wouldn't get if he lived to be a hundred - not likely, considering how the SS man lived - was that what we were supposed to do and what our superiors ordered us to do weren't necessarily the same thing.
Soldiers didn't commonly have to make that distinction. Jäger hadn't worried about it, not until he had found out how the Germans dealt with Jews in the east. Since then, he hadn't been able to look away. He knew what sort of disaster awaited the world if the Lizards won the war. Like Skorzeny, he was willing to do anything to keep that from happening. Unlike the SS man, he wasn't willing to believe that everything he did was fine and virtuous.
That made for another subtle distinction, but he clung to it.
- Another Turtledove book late in his Timeline-191 series features a character who has become a guard at what is Auschwitz in the extermination of American Southern blacks and considers himself doing vital work for the safety of his country. When he eventually realizes, through the simple decency of one of the prisoners, that blacks are people, he is overcome at the evil he has been helping enact and kills himself.
  - This is especially poignant, as earlier in the series the character somewhat identified with blacks (though in a way that only made him dislike them more). He himself was of Mexican descent and commented more than once that in the eyes of most Confederates, he was at most only one step away from blacks.
In That Printer Of Udells, most of the people of Boyd City ignore its homelessness problem until, in the dead of winter, a man dies of hypothermia on the steps of a closed church. This spurs them to create a welfare house.
In Miracle Creek, Elizabeth realizes how much the overcrowded schedule must be stressing Henry out. She cancels all his therapy appointments and decides that the next HBOT treatment will be the last. Since she continues to emotionally abuse him on the way to the session, it seems unlikely that the realization would have stuck even if he hadn't died there.]
When the Angels Left the Old Country: At the end, Solomon Boaz realizes what a terrible person he's been, confesses his sins to the rabbi, and sells his factory to the workers.
In Worm, Bonesaw realizes just how screwed up she is thanks to some well placed words from Contessa and two years away from Jack.

Heel Realization / Literature

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