Legend has stereotyped him somewhat into a romantic hero, and he is generally known madami for his pag-ibig for Catherine Earnshaw than his final years of vengeance in the segundo half of the novel, in which he grows into a bitter, haunted man (although there are also a number of incidents in Heathcliff's early life that ipakita that he was an angry and sometimes malicious individual from the beginning; again, these tend to be glossed over in the popular imagination). His complicated, mesmerising and altogether bizarre nature makes him a rare character, with components of both the hero and villain.