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Ronnie Malenfant serves as the main antagonist of Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis and Why We’re in Vietnam. He was a brash, troubled ‘hot-shot’ and popular student in the University of Maine. He is a rival to Peter Riley and a Vietnam war veteran. He is the cause of the hearts epidemic in his college when he introduced the card game to the student populace.
Ronnie is described as being a popular delinquent during his time as a student at the University of Maine. Much of Ronnie's personality revolves around his addiction to gambling and playing hearts. Although completely addicted to the game, Ronnie is not a soar looser, as he would go on to consider the man that finally bested him to be his best opponent.
Ronnie's troubled nature would go on to lead him to drop out of his university, becoming drafted into the Vietnam war. His addiction to the card game would continue here, neglecting his duties and not taking the war very seriously. Although Ronnie was shown to gave some good morals, such as when he saved a student from dying, he would later become a homicidal maniac and when he brutally murdered an innocent Vietnamese woman. In the end of the novel, he decided to have a change in character, wanting to live life to the fullest after the war.
Biography[]
Hearts in Atlantis[]
Ronnie caused a gambling epidemic that spread throughout the entire university, causing many students to flunk out and be forced to enter the draft to fight in the Vietnam War. He gets the protagonist, Peter Riley and his friends addicted to the game, causing their grades to all drop significantly. He becomes annoyed when he loses and considered Peter Riley his best opponent.
At the climax of the novella, he reluctantly helps the others rescue Stoke from nearly drowning himself. At the end, he flunked out of university after the Christmas term and was forced to draft into the Vietnam war.
Blind Willie[]
He doesn’t appear but he is mentioned in King’s short story ‘Blind Willie’ published in his sixth collection and 42nd book ‘Hearts in Atlantis.’ In the story, he is thought about by Willie Shearman as he is reminiscing about Vietnam as he was constantly playing Hearts during the war and not taking the situation seriously. Willie isn’t sure what happened to him afterwards but he knows he survived the war.
Why We’re in Vietnam[]
In the story, he doesn’t appear physically but Sullivan reminiscences over how, during the war, he nearly caused another My Lai Massacre when he brutally murdered a Vietnamese woman with a bayonet. He was stopped by his lieutenant, Dieffenbaker who ordered one of their team to murder Clemens, one of his friends. His actions haunts Sullivan as the ghost of the woman visits him recurrently through hallucinations and eventually results in his death. At the end, it is revealed he has forged a new path for himself by Dieffenbaker to Sullivan that he is still alive and, after the war he seeks to live his life to the fullest.
Trivia[]
In another one of King's works—Nona—there is a character that appears with the same last name known as Betsy Malenfant. Although there was never any official connection made between the two, Ronnie had mentioned that he had a sister.
