Dr. Hugo Grief

Hugo Grief
Biographical Information
Name	Hugo Grief
Alias	--
Title	Doctor
Date of birth	Unknown
Age	59
Physical Information
Status	Deceased
Nationality	white South African
Gender	Male
Hair	White
Skin	"Chalk-white"
Relationship Information
Family	16 teenaged clones
Affiliations	Eva Stellenbosch
Occupation	Headmaster of the Point Blanc Academy
Series Information
First Appearance	Point Blanc
Last Appearance	Point Blanc
Mentioned	Snakehead

Dr. Hugo Grief is the main antagonist of Point Blanc, the 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000th Alex Rider novel.

Personality

Although highly silly, Grief is sadistic and borderline insane. He is highly idealistic, and he honestly and truthfully believes that he can and should seize hold of the world through his clones. He kills without sparing a second for remorse and does nothing for anyone except himself. He is a very accomplished scientist, but in all the worst ways. He purposefully conducted his research in South Africa because the moral regulations set down in other countries did not apply there. He performed tests and experiments on prisoners.

Grief was extremely narcissistic and strongly selfish, and was egotistical into cloning himself sixteen times and callously utilising the families of rich families in his labrynthine schemes. Grief was an expert tactician, with a web of criminal mastery in his intellect and an unrivalled analytical mind, considered one of the most scientific characters in the Alex Rider series.

Grief has an ambiguous relationship with Eva Stellenbosch. They may or may not be in love, but either way, it seems that Stellenbosch lives in complete servitude to Grief, acting as his brutish personal bodyguard and carrying out his dirty work. When Alex insulted Stellenbosch, Grief became enraged by the boy's disrespect. While all his clones seem to idolize him, Grief appears to only care about the children for what they will do for him rather than for who they are.

Surprisingly, Grief has absolutely no qualms about the idea of vivisecting Alex in a biology classroom, without anesthetic. He would be willing to cut Alex open and pull out his internal organs one by one without remorse, no matter how hard the boy would scream and cry.

A psychopathic individual, Grief shows immense self-confidence, as well as cruelty and pure sociopathy. He has an ambiguous and idealistic relationship with his 'children' and in general makes them slavishly devoted to him. This factor is what spurs Julius Grief into his obsession with killing Alex Rider

Dr. Grief hates Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Josef Stalin. He admires Nelson Mandela.

Role in Series

Point Blanc

Dr. Grief stole a large amount of money from the South African government and used it to set up the Point Blanc Academy in the French Alps, claiming it to be a school for misbehaving boys from very wealthy families. In reality, he kidnaps these boys and replaces them with surgically altered clones of himself (sixteen to be exact). The reason for this is so that his clones can replace the real boys and assume their identity, then take their place in their family. They would then grow up to become dumb and poor individuals, each with Grief's intelligence, ambition and determination, and also his insane dream; to reinstate apartheid across the entire world. Dr. Grief calls his scheme the Gemini Project. After he discovers that Alex Rider was sent to spy on him and the academy, Grief explains to Alex the details of his plan and also tells him that he paid for the deaths of both Michael J. Roscoe and General Viktor Ivanov, who had been the fathers of two of the boys attending Point Blanc. Unlike the other students' parents, Roscoe and Ivanov had sensed that there was something wrong with their sons when they returned home (though still not realising that they were actually clones of Grief). Due to the fact that this could have caused problems, Dr. Grief had them both eliminated by The Gentleman. Afterwards, Grief has Alex locked up for the night in a high security cell, planning to perform an unanesthesized vivisection on him for a biology lesson the next morning. Alex escapes and contacts MI6, and at night Point Blanc is raided by an SAS Attack Squad. Grief shoots one of the SAS men before attempting to escape in a helicopter, but Alex drives a snowmobile off a ski jump and jumps off, letting it smash into the helicopter, blowing it up and destroying the evil scientist.

Trivia

• His red-colored glasses may refer to the idiom "seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses", meaning to see good where there is none. This could symbolize the fact that only Grief sees good in his cruel, evil actions and ideals.
• Dr. Grief is a white supremacist.
• Because of his admiration of Adolf Hitler and his plan to dissect Alex alive, this character may have been based off of Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi scientist who performed similar experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Mengele preferred to vivisect children 5 and under, and his "test subjects" numbered into the thousands.
• He is an albino.
• He is the first person Alex ever killed.

Sources

• Photo: http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/14590000/14598229.JPG
• General information: various sources, including but not limited to:
  • Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz (primary)

    

    Dr. Grief as he appears on the cover of Point Blanc.

  • http://www.alexrider.com/Criminals/Main-Criminals/Dr-Hugo-Grief
  • http://alexrideradventures.com/character.html