William "Bill" Sikes is one of the two main antagonists (alongside Edward Leeford) of the classic novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Although Fagin and Mr. Bumble are sometimes regarded as antagonists, it is Bill Sikes who provides a large amount of the conflict to the story due to his violent nature and criminal tendencies, which surpass the thieving ways of Fagin as well as the child-abusing ways of Mr. Bumble and ultimately led to murder.
His Evil Ranking[]
His Villainous Deeds[]
- Even before the events of the novel, Sikes was already a bad person from the beginning, as he regularly beat his bull terrier Bulls-Eye for petty reasons. In fact, the beatings were so brutal that he was forced to acquire stitches for life.
- He was on board with Fagin's operation to train children into becoming criminals when they are older, which would make him partially responsible for their crimes.
- He threatened to kill Oliver if he didn’t go through a window and unlock a door to instigate a robbery, despite him being an orphaned child. He also had no remorse for using Oliver as an accomplice in his crimes.
- To a point, his actions led to Oliver taking a bullet to the arm and getting taken in by the gang he tried to rob, making Sikes responsible for Oliver's tragic and undeserved fate after the robbery went awry.
- He killed his girlfriend Nancy by brutally beating and bludgeoning her to death in a violent fit of rage out of paranoia and fear that she ratted him out based on what Fagin told him, and he didn't know that Nancy didn't actually betray him.
- When he encounters an angry mob, he tried to flee out of cowardice only to accidentally hang himself as a result, thus showing no remorse for his actions (with the exception of his murder of Nancy).
Why Doesn't He Stand Out?[]
- Despite passing the baseline due to his brutal murder of Nancy, the reason he ultimately cannot qualify as Near Pure Evil is because he fails the Heinous Standards too much to Fagin, who basically has the exact same resources but directly influenced children into becoming criminals by teaching them about crime and he was also the one who manipulated Sikes himself into killing Nancy.
- He genuinely cares for Nancy, as despite beating her to death, he felt devastated when he realised that he killed her and starts to have visions of her at several points in the novel after beating her to death, even attempting to abandon his dog as a representation of his guilt.
- He has a Pet the Dog moment where he helps an injured Oliver even when it would have been easier to leave him to die.
Trivia[]
- While the original version of Sikes is a Villainous Benchmark, his animated counterpart in the 1988 Disney movie Oliver & Company qualifies as Pure Evil.
External Links[]
- Bill Sikes on the Villains Wiki