I Cannot Live without My Soul

Heathcliff, a most tragic and dreadful literary character in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights,   

endures an unfortunate childhood at the hands of the Earnshaws. Upon his reintroduction to the reader as an adult, Heathcliff is “a tall man dressed in dark clothes, with dark face and hair. . . . The cheeks were sallow, and half covered with black whiskers; the brows lowering, the eyes deep-set and singular” (Bronte, p. 96-97).

Heathcliff embodies the Byronic hero in that he “defies authority,” yields to a “destructive passion,” and sulks in “selfish brooding” (Carson-Newman University, 2013). He is a sullen boy and a “violently passionate, black-natured man. As the years add age his suffering adds hatred . . . [he] becomes filled with an inhuman, almost demonic, desire for vengeance” (Magill, p. 1270). Consuming passion for Catherine Earnshaw destroys his life when she thinks him below her and instead marries Edgar Linton. Heathcliff allows his jealousy to torment everyone in his life and goes to his grave a “devastatingly wasted human” (Magill, p. 1270).

Citations:
Bronte, E. (1847). Wuthering Heights. New York: Tess Press.
Carson-Newman University. (2013). Byronic hero. Accessed November 16, 2013, from                        http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_B.html
Magill, F.N., Ed. (1963). Cyclopedia of literary characters. New York: Harper & Row.