Stars Symbol Analysis

In If We Were Villains, stars symbolize the pressure of fate that weighs on the central characters—especially James, who laments his lack of agency throughout the novel. James struggles under the yoke of the “villainous” role in which he finds himself both on and off stage, but even his initial act of villainy—killing Richard with the boathook—was an incident over which he had very little control, since he was only trying to protect himself after Richard backed him up to the edge of the dock. The stars’ first notable appearance in the story occurs when Oliver and James gaze at the sky together after Richard has nearly drowned James in the lake on Halloween. They shine down on the scene, foreshadowing James’s lack of choice in striking Richard—after all, if Halloween night is any indication, it seems as though Richard is willing to kill James, and the choice between killing and being killed isn’t much of a choice at all. Oliver notices the stars hanging in the sky in similar moments that lend Richard’s death an air of cosmic predetermination: when the fight over the cellist first breaks out inside the house at the Julius Caesar cast party, and over Richard’s body as he lies dying in the water.

Of course, the constellations as a metaphor for fate or higher power go back to Shakespeare, as Dean Holinshed reminds his students (and the reader) in his reading from Henry V at Richard’s memorial service: “[…] scourge the bad revolting stars / That have consented unto Henry’s death […]” Other Shakespearean quotations highlighting the connection between destiny and the stars abound, and they’re almost all in James’s speeches; Romeo consults the stars before his first meeting with Juliet, and Edmund spits in the face of people who blame their own shortcomings on a higher power.