Heathcliff Tyrant or Victim
... As Heathcliff changes throughout Wuthering Heights, we, the readers, begin to both hate and sympathize with him. Heathcliff the tyrant focuses on the revenge of Hindley and the Lintons but the reader can never forget the abandoned, hungry child in the streets of Liverpool. ... ”(Readings on Wuthering Heights, 27) As the central conflict of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is “an incarnation of evil qualities, implacable hate, ingratitude, falsehood, selfishness, and revenge. ... Heathcliff resolves to free himself from the resulting humiliation of oppression by becoming the oppressor. As the initiation to his revenge, Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights and returns three years later a “tall, athletic, well-formed”(Wuthering Heights, 96) man. ... Heathcliff’s revenge was carefully laid out and executed. ... With a savage and voracious appetite for inflicting cruelty, Heathcliff did not do anything virtuous or noble. Phillip Drew sums up Heathcliff: “His whole career is one of calculated malice: during this time he does not perform one good or kindly action, and continually expresses his hatred of all other characters.