Antihero

In literature and film, an anti-hero is a character that possesses some of the personality traits and weakness traditionally assigned to villains, outlaws and those that either are shunned by society or do not abide by the status quo, but nonetheless have enough heroic qualities and intentions to align them with the heroes in the readers' minds.

Anti-heroes can be awkward, obnoxious, passive, pitiful, obtuse, or just normal; but they are always, in some fundamental way, flawed, unqualified, or failed heroes. When the anti-hero is a central character in a work of fiction the work will frequently deal with the effect their flawed character has on the other people they meet. Additionally the work may depict how their character alters over time, either leading to punishment, un-heroic success or redemption.

Comic books commonly feature anti-heroes (also known as "dark heroes") who are individuals fighting for good, but either:

have some tragic flaw (such as a tormented past),
are fighting for reasons that are not entirely altruistic (they may be after a villain due to a grudge or other selfish motivations, with little or no regard for typical "heroic" means),
are neither "good" nor "evil", but find themselves fighting on the side of good due to circumstance, or
use questionable means to reach their goals.

A good working definition of the anti-hero is a paradoxical character; that is, someone who within the context of the story is a hero, but taken out of context could easily be seen as a criminal, an outlaw, or just simply unlikeable.

Types

Vigilante

Arguably the most popular type of anti-hero is the vigilante. Usually, these are individuals with the same goals as a traditional hero, but for whom "the ends justify the means". This character type is a mainstay in comic books: for example, in the Marvel comic Daredevil, attorney Matt Murdock seeks to bring evildoers to justice in the court systems by day, but when the judicial system fails, he exacts vigilante justice by night. Another example is Frank Castle, an ex-Marine whose family was murdered in an act of gang violence. Castle takes the name "The Punisher" and begins exacting vigilante justice by any means necessary, often slaughtering dozens of adversaries at a time.

The developing hero

A second type of anti-hero is one who starts off possessing unlikeable traits such as prejudice, immaturity, cockiness, or a single-minded focus on things such as wealth, status, or revenge, or even being a criminal. As the story develops, the character grows and changes, and eventually becomes sympathetic and rises to the occasion to become heroic in every sense of the word.

Well-known examples of this type include:

Han Solo from the Star Wars films
Conan the Cimmerian from the stories by Robert E. Howard
Napoleon Wilson (played by Darwin Joston) in the 1976 film Assault on Precinct 13
The actor Clint Eastwood became famous by playing anti-heroes in movies such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars
The first Doctor Who (as played by actor William Hartnell) who was initially portrayed as a self-centered, cynical, cantankerous old man.

The drifter

A third type of anti-hero is one who feels helpless, distrusts conventional values and is often unable to commit to any ideals, but accepts (and often relishes) their status as an outsider. The cyberpunk genre makes extensive use of this character-type, such as the character of Takeshi Kovacs, an ex-special forces mercenary from Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon.

The failure

Another type of anti-hero is a character who constantly moves from one disappointment in his life to the next, without end, with only occasional and fleeting successes. But they persist and even attain a form of success through persistence and their determination to never give up or change their goals. These characters often keep a deep-seated optimism that one day they will succeed (though usually in the end they still meet with failure, the ultimate fate of a traditional villain).

An often-cited anti-hero of this type is the character of Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Gatsby's one true aim was to gain the love of a woman, Daisy Buchanan, who was beyond his social status. He, through what Fitzgerald implies to be illicit means, amasses a fortune in order to make himself acceptable to the 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 has hope that he may one day prevail.

Flawed everyman

Sometimes, an anti-hero is an ordinary man or woman who completely lacks any particular heroic aspects, and also features one or two highly negative personality traits such as a large degree of greed, selfishness, cowardice or laziness. While such characters are not nearly despicable enough to be classified as villains, they lack any of the classical heroic traits such as bravery or self-sacrifice that normally distinguish heroes (even flawed heroes) from the general population. Typically, due to circumstances beyond their control, such characters are thrust into extraordinary situations that one would normally expect a traditional hero to deal with.

Examples of such characters include:

Homer Simpson from The Simpsons
Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Lenny Nero from Strange Days
Case from Neuromancer

Such characters often behave immorally or in a cowardly fashion, and do not always have good intentions, which distinguishes them from the typical everyman or reluctant heroic characters such as Scooby-Doo or the characters played by Jackie Chan, yet they lack the actual malice demonstrated by "villains" such as Richard III (see below).

The villain

Occasionally the central character in a work has no redeeming features at all. The character seems to be a complete villain but for the fact that the story's focus is entirely upon this character and other characters are so insignificant, weak or flawed that they offer no respite. The reader or viewer is forced to sympathize or relate to a wholly unlikeable character and to directly confront their feeling for this kind of hero.

Examples include:

Pinkie Brown from Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock
Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange
William Shakespeare's Richard III
Tony Montana from Scarface

A variation of this approach is a character who is, by traditional sensibility, a criminal, but who is actually a pleasant person, exploiting people who are corrupt beyond redemption, sometimes with comic effect. The classic example of this kind of character is Maurice Leblanc's heroic thief Arsene Lupin. Other heroic criminals include:

Simon Templar aka The Saint
Cary Grant's character from the film To Catch a Thief

Sometimes the heroic outlaw will become friendly with the hero and may even reform. The character Flambeau from the Father Brown mystery stories is a good example of this.

References

External links