Antihero Definition

Hero/Heroine: The principal sympathetic character (male or female) in a literary work. Heroes and heroines typically exhibit admirable traits: idealism, courage, and integrity, for example. Famous heroes and heroines include Pip in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, the anonymous narrator in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Sethe in Toni Morrison's Beloved. (Compare with Antagonist, antihero, and protagonist.) Anti-hero: A central characterin a work of literature who lacks traditional heroic qualities such as courage, physical prowess, and fortitude. Anti-heros typically distrust conventional values and are unable to commit themselves to any ideals. They generally feel helpless in a world over which they have no control. Antiheroes usually accept, and often celebrate, their positions as social outcasts. A well-known anti-hero is Yossarian in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22.(Compare with Antagonist, Hero, and Protagonist.) Anti-hero In literature and film, an anti-hero is a central or supporting character that has some of the personality flaws and ultimate fortune traditionally assigned to villains but nonetheless also have enough heroic qualities or intentions to gain the sympathy of readers. Anti-heroes can be awkward, obnoxious, passive, pitiful, or obtusebut they are always, in some fundamental way, flawed or failed heroes. The concept of the anti-hero has grown from a tendency of modern authors to present villains as complex, even sympathetic, characters whose motivations are not inherently evil and sometimes even good. The line, therefore, between an anti-hero and a villain is sometimes not clear. Types One type of anti-hero feels helpless, distrusts conventional values and are often unable to commit to any ideals, but they accept and oftentimes relish their status as outsiders. The cyberpunk genre makes extensive use of this character-type. Another type of anti-hero is a character who constantly moves from one disappointment in their lives to the next, without end, with only occasional and fleeting successes. But they persist and even attain a form of heroic success by steadfastly never giving-up or changing their goals. These characters often keep a deepseated optimism that one day, they will succeed. But in the end they still meet the ultimate fate of a traditional villain, failure. For example, the one true aim of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby was to gain the love of a woman beyond his social status, Daisy. Gatsby, through what Fitzgerald alludes to be illicit means, amasses a fortune in order to make himself acceptable to then married Daisy. He does, for a time, have an affair with her but in the end his character flaws and illusions that he could turn back time destroy him. But through the whole experience, even after Daisy's husband puts an end to her illicit affair, Gatsby still had hope that he would one day prevail. What is an Antihero? The spice of a story, the element that makes it more than simple heroes and villains, lies within the character of the Antihero. The Antihero is someone with some of the qualities of a villain, up to and including brutality, cynicism, and ruthlessness, but with the soul or motivations of a more conventional Hero. The Antihero probably existed first (before

conventional Heroes), perhaps pre-dating the sanctifying influence of organized religion. Many of the protagonists of Western and Eastern classical and mythological stories fit into the broad antihero mold, especially those who are shown as having turbulent, violent backgrounds and conflicting motivations. Frequently, it is this mental conflict that serves to link the discrete episodes which compose such stories. (Such a connector was necessary due to the oral storytelling tradition that persisted until fairly recently.) Resolution of external conflict was tied to attaining internal balance and peace. Odysseus, for example, begins his "Odyssey" torn as to whether to brave the seas and reclaim his throne or to remain on a blissful island in the passionate arms of a woman who is not his wife. Through a truly legendary series of trials, he comes to the conclusion that home is where his heart and mind can be at peace. Certainly, the adventurous journey is alluring to reader-listeners, but the emotional travails of Odysseus (and his wife & son, who have their own problems) is probably what kept Homer's audiences clamoring for more. The push for conformity of stories and ideas that came with the growth of powerful, organized religious movements and reliable, affordable printing yielded less conflicted protagonists, with little of the bloodlust of their assumed predecessors. Although not a Biblical expert, I have observed a certain degree of violence and passion present in the preliterary Bible stories that has been toned down or eliminated entirely in the later depictions. On the secular front, the Antihero has fared better, used at times as a mirror for social commentary and political critique. The protagonist's spot may be used, but more often an antihero character is relegated to a secondary or fatal role in the story, skirting potentially negative attention. Swift's Gulliver and Hugo's Jean Valjean both had their fatal personality flaws and yet held fast to their attitudes, but although they could easily represent any person buffeted by life's harshness, they are not exactly characters to model one's future life on. In later times, authors have been bolder in their use of flawed heroes and even villains as key characters, perhaps as the threat of retribution has lessened somewhat. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn was a self-described rascal, causing all manner of trouble and even committing the then-crime of helping Jim, the runaway slave. Coming together with the increased use of emotionally unsettled characters, the propensity to leave a story incomplete with respect to characters' morality also increased. Holden Caulfield, the antiposter-boy of Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye", flirts with criminal behavior and is both selfabsorbed and depressed. Yet his frank portrait of adolescence resonates with many people, despite the lack of any last-minute salvation or even a final resolution of his many conflicts. Picking up the themes of literature, live and recorded drama (stage productions, radio, movies, television) also make frequent use of antiheroes and complex villains, although there is more resistance to leaving matters of the heart and mind unfinished at the conclusion. The film noir approach relies upon such characters, and the best examples of this technique have few or no cut-and-dry, good-or-evil characters. "The Maltese Falcon", which admittedly began as a book, is all about the deadly waltz of four people with blatantly selfish motives willing and able to lie, steal, and murder for their obsessions. Despite all this, the protagonist and star, Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, is so highly regarded by reader-viewers and writers alike that he has practically spawned a new antihero sub-archetype, the grizzled, world-weary, working-class detective. Outside of noir, the protagonist's role is largely out of reach to any but the most goodhearted, but there is a growing tendency to give villains more complex, even sympathetic, motivations. The line between an antihero and a villain has always been hazy and open to discussion, but lately the distinction has become moot in some cases. In certain long

dramas that evoke the epic spirit of the earliest stories, characters that appear as villains initially evolve and develop only to be absorbed into the storyline as antiheroes. The modern author's renewed awareness that readers are likely to be familiar with a story's entire history permits them the freedom to develop more elaborate and complex characters, some of which fit readily into the antihero mold. In the attempt to spread awareness of these multi-layered and highly interesting characters, I'm assembling this gallery. Each of these characters in some way reflects the antihero ethic (such as it is), and if the examples are drawn largely from Japanese manga/anime, American & British films and science-fiction/fantasy, well, those are my current major interests. I'm certainly open to suggestions for new additions to the Gallery, as long as you can make a good case for why a particular character is an Antihero (or Antihero-like Villain). Potential discussion and debate is what makes this interesting. Anti-heroes The author of "Mistler's Exit" celebrates three deplorable protagonists. -----------BY LOUIS BEGLEY A heretical notion has taken root in the minds of many readers and book reviewers: They believe that the principal character in a novel should be a fundamentally good person. Should the author, on the contrary, endow his principal character with some of the defects of character and the vices he has observed in himself and others, they expect him to arrange, before the last page of the book is turned, a redemptive experience that turns the outrageous or despairing protagonist into a better person. Woe betide the author if he doesn't comply. It is then said that one cannot like his novel because it is unpleasant. Gentle reader, there is no such rule. Great novels aren't required to be pleasant or to have lovable heroes and heroines. As soon as your many occupations permit, please rush to read the three masterpieces referred to below. If their deplorable protagonists find a place in your heart, there are many others with whom I will be happy to acquaint you. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky This novel opens with a justly famous sentence: "I am a sick man ... I am a wicked man." We never learn the speaker's name, but his situation is defined with abrupt efficiency: He is 40, a distant relation left him 6,000 rubles, which is just enough to subsist somewhere at the edge of St. Petersburg in the sort of squalor that 19th century Russian novels have taught us was de rigueur for impoverished intelligentsia, separated from the crass misery of Russia's masses only by a diploma and rudimentary acquaintance with the French language. The "Notes" are written, he tells us, not for the public, since no one would want to read them, but because "on paper it will somehow come out more solemnly." What comes out first is a brilliant tirade -- sarcastic and desperate -- against the utilitarian delusion that men, if taught to think straight, will strive for the common good. The underground man knows this is rubbish; men love suffering as much or more than their well-being. He illustrates his thesis by a confession, the recollection of events -- he has "hundreds of such recollections" -- that occurred when he was still a minor official in a government department. At the core of the anecdote is his visit to a brothel after a drunken dinner with successful and wealthier schoolmates. He wakes up at the side of a girl and idly, to humiliate her and aggrandize himself, catechizes her about the ignominy and dangers of a prostitute's life. Or perhaps he does it in fact out of genuine compassion. Since he is a "paradoxalist," caught constantly between contradictory positions, we cannot tell. Both positions are probably true.

Before leaving, he gives the girl his address. Thereupon, he lives in terror of having been taken seriously: The girl may actually arrive at his hovel, see him in his tattered and filthy bathrobe and take measure of his nullity. When the girl does appear, he tells her hysterically the "truth" about his motives. When he again awakens in her embrace, the need to humiliate returns. He presses a banknote into her hand. In a moment, he sees that she is gone, having left his money on the table. He runs after her in the street; she is nowhere to be seen; in fact he never sees her again. Reflecting on the act of writing the story of this encounter, the underground man comes to see it as "corrective punishment," no longer literature. He recognizes that "a novel needs a hero, and here are purposely collected all the features for an anti-hero ..." The greatness of "Notes from the Underground" lies precisely here: in Dostoevsky's ability to make wholly convincing, through the intellectual vigor and wit of his writing, the self-contradictory features of his anti-hero, to win us over to the side of a man who does not hesitate to see himself as a monster. The Trial by Franz Kafka Kafka thought of "Notes from the Underground" as the true source of all modern literature and a determining influence on his own work. In turn, "The Trial," the greatest of Kafka's three unfinished novels, has marked 20th century consciousness more searingly perhaps than any other novel. Because of its impact, the adjective "Kafkaesque" has currency everywhere: not just among readers of Kafka's oeuvre, but also among people who have learned, by osmosis, to use it as shorthand for the arcane and unchallengeable means through which the modern state dehumanizes us. "The Trial" is the story of the chief clerk of a bank, Joseph K., about whom someone must have been telling lies because one morning, without having done anything wrong, he is arrested by two men in plain clothes. They offer no explanation, and yet K. accepts their authority. Thereafter, like a man lost in thick fog, he attempts to penetrate the workings of the court before which his case is pending -- an omnipotent and omnipresent court that may not even be a part of the constituted state. K., too, is an anti-hero, his character a mixture of servile cowardice, slyness, opportunism and occasional rebellious optimism. Just like the man from the underground, he is dismally lonely, his solitude relieved only by fleeting sexual contacts. In the end, K. is executed by the court's envoys, men who look like 10thrate old actors. In a vacant lot, one of them thrusts a knife into K.'s heart. "'Like a dog!' he said; it was as if the shame of it must outlive him." Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard This Austrian author is easily the greatest novelist to have written in German in the second half of the 20th century. His special admiration for Dostoevsky and Kafka is no accident; he shares with them the inability to see any feeling or circumstance other than as a set of contradictions, either one of which should, but in fact cannot, exclude the other. "Woodcutters" is the story of an "artistic dinner" in Vienna, at which the narrator is present, and unwilling to leave, although there is nothing that he detests more than artistic dinners. He has accepted the invitation because it was extended abruptly by a couple who 30 years earlier had been his best friends and protectors and whom now he loathes. Earlier that day, the hosts and he, and a woman who is also a guest at the dinner, had been at the funeral of another woman, once a friend and probably the narrator's lover, who had hanged herself. The guest of honor, an actor at Vienna's Burgtheater, is late. The dinner is served only after midnight, and while they wait and during the meal that drags on as the actor pontificates, the narrator, in a vitriolic and marvelously humorous monologue, dissects the lives of the dead woman, the guests and the hosts, and of course, himself. Bernhard's narrators are prodigious haters, and yet we love them; they are too brilliant for it to be otherwise. salon.com | May 15, 2000 ------------

About the writer Louis Begley is the author of five novels, including, most recently, "Mistler's Exit."