"evil" protagonists

[billd91]

I don't know for certain what was going through his mind and what emotional reactions he was hoping to garner from the reader. I can make inferences though. Those are the inferences I make. I suppose you could make others, but I think mine are pretty well supported by the text.

As for your specific defense of whether he's just providing a detailed picture of the culture... that's not a very good defense. Because its not a real culture. Its something he made up to serve as a plot element. He's ultimately responsible for whether it serves the overall theme and tone of the book, or detracts from it.

Because it's not a real culture, I would figure he would need to do more work to really color it in, even without a deliberate attempt to specifically appeal to the reader's emotions or play to the theme.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I read The Eyes of the Overworld again last year for the first time in maybe 20 years, and was struck by the rape scene; not because I necessarily viewed it as any more abhorrent than Cugel's other actions, but because I had fully digested the idea of a feminist critique of literature - a perspective I didn't have when I was 18.

Fantasy and sci-fi in general are replete with misogyny; I find Vance far more tolerable in this regard than GRRM or the guy who wrote The Black Company. Negative gender portrayal in these books is worse to me because it's insidious, more internalized by the authors; they aren't aware it even exists in their writing. YMMV.

The thing that stuck about The Eyes of the Overworld when I was 18 - and which I dreaded reading again when I was 38 - was when he killed the sprite that lived in the shell for playing a practical joke on him.

That really sucked.

Cugel's Saga, written later, is generally more in line with modern sensibilities.

 

[pawsplay]

6. There are no good justifications.

Maybe, but I wouldn't consider justification a necessary element for, say, the inclusion of a murder act. Psycho slasher movies demonstrate readily that unjustified homicide can exist in modern entertainment.