I saw a comment about how professor Snape from Harry Potter was just an a glorified incel. That struck me for some reason because there is truth to that. He was obsessed with a woman who didn’t love him and joined a facist ideological group. He redeems himself as we all know but it left me questioning what other books have incel type characters or just involuntary celibate characters in general. I read the sound and the fury and one of the main characters “Quentin” could be viewed as an incel. He was a virgin who was painfully obsessed with his sister losing her virginity and woman having sex before marriage in general. He ends up killing himself.
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The best example I can think of is “A Confederacy of Dunces.”
*Paradais* by Fernanda Melchor
*The Inconsolables* by Michael Wehunt
This is a short story collection, and a couple of the stories within have such characters.
Harold Lauder from _The Stand_ (Stephen King)
Notes from underground
Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, one of the main characters is pretty incel and I think it’s handled fairly well
Sad to see no one has mentioned Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata in which the main character enters into a non-romantic domestic partnership with an incel so that both of them can have more social credibility. Great book.
Strahd von Zarovich from “I, Strahd” is a great one if you don’t mind reading a book set in the D&D Ravenloft setting.
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Certainly not the first book, but there is a well written character with incel-ish behavior in the first law series installment The Heroes.
*The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao*
He desperately wants to get laid. He’s fat. He’s obsessed over anime and Marvel. He uses big words even though he’s not that smart. Socially awkward. And when a girl does glance his way he completely falls for her.
Whatever by Michel Houellebecq has a classic involuntarily celibate character
Brady Hartsfield in Mr. Mercedes. Almost Harold Lauder reincarnated.
The Wretch – Frankenstein
Does the phantom of the opera count?
The Collector by John Fowles.
Confederacy of Dunces. Love this book. You will, too!
Littlefinger from ASoIaF gives a ton of incel energy
Madeline Miller’s *Galatea* features what some would call a very incel Pymalion. Euripides’ *Hippolytus* is about a man who is voluntarily celibate but still holds some particularly strong incel-like views.
Notes from underground
Notes from underground, Dostoevsky. Maybe the first incel archetype to really be explored in literature.
Ehhh Snape hated everyone pretty equally
Child of God, Cormac McCarthy
Wade in Ready Player One (the book) has some incel tendencies
Grima Wormtongue comes off to me as an incel type
“In the Miso Soup” by Ryu Murakami, character of Frank. He’s an American tourist looking for sex in Japan, but we end up learning that is not exactly the case.
I don’t know if Snape qualifies as incel. Yes he was obsessed/hopelessly in love with one woman, but he didn’t seem to have a hatred for all other women. Nor did the Death Eaters – homicidal racists, definitely, but not incels.
this thread is like a Masterclass on “Reddit Doesn’t Know What Incel Means”
Seeing the comments, surely there’s a difference between that and unrequited love stories
How is Snape an Incel? I don’t remember him hating women because he thinks they don’t like him due to his bone structure or height. He wasn’t a misogynist at all…
He was jealous and bitter that his childhood friend and one-sided love got together with his bully. That’s not being an incel. If anything that is just a classic one-sided love trope that existed forever…