No more heroes anymore – by Rowena House

This month had been surprisingly productive in terms of new words for the seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress, allowing for the fact that progress is currently measured against a baseline of laughably little to zero.

Then I ran across a blog about anti-heroes which made me question whether I’m approaching my protagonist from entirely the wrong direction and opened up a can of worms about latter-day heroes in general. Food, indeed, for the inner procrastinator.

Here’s the link to the anti-hero post by Sean Glatch:

https://writers.com/anti-hero-characters

And here’s his opening definition of anti-heroes:

‘The anti-hero inverts traits typical of heroic figures—hence the “anti.” While a conventional hero exhibits bravery, charisma, strength, and a strong sense of justice, the anti-hero will more closely resemble everyday human beings. They might struggle with ethical dilemmas, have selfish intentions, act indecisively, or even reject their hero’s journey altogether.’

Hmm…

So, according to this interpretation of literary convention, ethical dilemmas and indecision are defining traits of the anti-hero, rather than reflections of the complexity of real-world dilemmas.

Thus, Hamlet is for most of the play an anti-hero, until he heroically slaughters leading members of the cast. Okay…

If, on the other hand, as Mr. Glatch himself points out, character ‘flaws’ such as indecision reflect everyday human experience, why on earth are we, as writers, perpetuating the myth that decisiveness is the only true path for a hero? Aren’t we doing a disservice to our readers and, likely, ourselves by perpetuated outmoded values and unrealistic self-expectations?

Is it, in other words, time to drop the false dichotomy between heroes and anti-heroes and stop urging readers to strive to become something they’re not? 

The above rant suggests I disagree with Mr. Glatch’s analysis of literary anti-heroes, for which I apologise. I found his post stimulating and worthwhile reading. But I wanted to lay out the gist of my intuitive response to it before I got too confused about the paradoxes of the subject to write anything about it at all.

[Heavy editing of this post would be helpful for both my thinking and the text’s clarity, but, as always, time is the enemy. I’ll try my best not to waste yours.]

There is, I guess, a simple solution: replace the term anti-hero with ‘contemporary hero’ and relegate characters who display unadulterated ‘bravery, charisma, strength, and a strong sense of justice’ to a chapter marked ‘outdated literary convention’? In practice, that’s probably what’s happening anyway. But re-labelling things doesn’t tend to solve their underlying problems.

For example…

Mr. Glatch discussion of an anti-hero from Dostoevsky prompted an internal debate about my WIP’s historical protagonist and what sort of heroism, if any, he displays.

This quote is from that section of the blog: ‘The unnamed narrator in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground … is vengeful, lonely, and filled with self-hatred. Despite working as a civil servant for decades, he has no regard for others, and instead operates under the philosophy of “rational egoism” – the idea that our own self-interest is the most rational lens through which to make decisions.’

The point Dostoevsky is making by creating such an unlikeable character is: ‘An anti-hero might reflect the worst impulses of society and human behaviour, but the reader also learns a surprising amount about themselves and others through reflecting on the behaviours of protagonists that reject conventional morality.’

Fair point.

But what about characters who uphold conventional morality? Are they necessarily heroes? My protagonist accepts the morality of his time – that is, he believes it is right to hang witches – and thinks he is acting the hero when defending a witch trial despite his personal doubts about the justice of the prosecutions.

We, from a contemporary western perspective, want him to rebel, to uphold rationality and confront a society ‘that reflects the worst impulses of … human behaviour’ – in this instance, the impulse of the English judiciary to execute impoverished and marginalised people in the name of God and King James.

But does rebellion make for the best story? If my protagonist is a hero of our time (i.e., a rebel in his) won’t that destroy the pathos of his story? Isn’t it better if he rightly suspects injustice but lacks the courage to confront it?

A heroic rebel ending would also perpetuate the comfortable lie that good people necessarily do the right thing in the end, even if it’s futile in the grand order of things.

Meanwhile, whatever the ending, this story demands an anti-hero protagonist to even exist. He must have doubts, otherwise it’s just about a bloke attending a witch trial and being okay about it.

Perhaps for Dostoevsky an anti-hero could be a salutary lesson for the reader. Today, if she or he is us, not so much.

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