Antiheroes in Stories

Posted on 06 October 2009

Everyone loves the hero, or at least an author would hope so.  Yet, today’s writing has become sophisticated enough that a hero cannot just be a hero anymore.  If an author wants to write a traditional Robin Hood or Natty Bumppo, he or she will find that hero not very well received.  Just like the Greek style of play (either a complete comedy or complete tragedy) has been replaced by the more Shakespearean combinations, so has the traditional hero been replaced by a flawed person.

Now, if you read my writing for more than two stories, you will probably come to see what I think a hero should be.  A hero needs to be a true Everyman now.  They need doubts, fears, flaws, vices, and, you know, the whole “three-dimensional” thing.  Well, you can still have characters with all of that who are still heroes.  And I don’t mean they are the hero of the story, I mean that they are still, on the whole, heroic.

And there is nothing wrong with that.  It is just, you know, not for me.  I see very little attraction in writing—and to a lesser extend reading—a hero who is still without a doubt at the end of the day the hero.  I love it when readers walk way somewhat confused, not of what happened, but if they were honestly rooting for the right person at the end of the story.  I love it more when their minds change after talking to people about the story.

But, should every “hero” (and by necessity villain) be so ambiguous that they could perchance trade places?  Eh, not really.  I’m oddly fine with villains being villains, cause, honestly, there are some really messed up people out there.  I’m even fine with true heroes, and with writing true heroes, but I just don’t like them being my main character.

Perhaps it is something to do with my outlook.  Aside from my agnostic leanings and moral relativistic views on life, I have just come to feel that no one is truly a full hero (or a full villain), especially in their own mind.  And, since the story is being written more or less from the hero’s point of view, then should that hero not come across in that light?  As I see it, it’s the conflicted characters, the ones that wrestle with their own gray-space and inner morality, that make for the best reading.