Examining the Anti-Hero

Is the anyone more dangerous then someone with nothing to lose?  A man who has lost everything, but the promise of revenge?  Or how about the woman willing to kill, for but a fistful of dollars?  Or someone whose only goal in life is to survive, and to hell with whoever gets in the way?

Today, lets talk about Anti-Heroes.   The Mad Maxs, the Wolverines, and the Conans of the world.  What is it, in this day and age, that draws us to these Blackguards?  Well, to understand this, we need to take a few steps back to 10th grade English class, and examine the differences between the Hero and his darker counterpart.


The Hero

In a nutshell (cue out-of-date Austin Powers joke) the Hero acts out of a sense of duty.  They see something wrong in the world around them and feel compelled to change that.  No matter their background, no matter their current state, they feel a need to fight for the greater good.  They hear about the princess locked away in a madman's tower and, despite the danger, despite the obstacles, they fight on.  Not because of the promise of wealth, or glory, but because it is Right.

The Anti-Hero

Princess locked away in a madman's tower?  Sure, our Anti-Hero will save her, but the difference between him an our Hero above is motivation.  Greater good be damned, the Anti-Hero needs to see some coin before he sets off.  And you better believe that he's gonna want that glory, gonna want that fame.  For the Anti-Hero is separated from his Goody-Goody counterpart by one key element; Self Interest.

So, what is it that makes our Anti-Hero so compelling?  Two things.  One; self interest speaks to a part of the human condition.  We as people, no matter our compassion, no matter our empathy, are still required to take care of our selves.  Now, I'm not saying that we're all self-centred bastards that look upon the world with jaded eyes.  But, we all experience moments where we need to put our own well being in front of others.  Stealing that spot at the gas pumps or telling that beggar that no, you don't have any change, as you jingle away.  

The second thing that draws us to the Anti-Hero, is growth.  For the Hero, his journey often takes him to a place where his own morals are galvanized.  He learns that if he just keeps his head down and his fists swinging, that his way of thinking will win through.  This is not the case for the Anti-Hero.  Who often learns a far deeper lesson.  He learns that there is more to life then his own needs and desires.  He came to save the princess for the gold and glory, but when he finds her so distraught, so broken by that evil madman, that a crack forms in his icy heart.

That is the secret.  It's the Anti-Hero's journey to become something more, to grow, to learn how to be human.  Where the Hero represents what we wish we were, the Anti-Hero shows us in stark relief all that we are, and all that we can overcome within ourselves.  And this journey, much like the Hero's, can take a long time to reach it's end.

I mentioned Mad Max is my last entry, so I'll tap those movies again.  Here we have a man, struggling to do what is right, only to see the evil men that he's been fighting against take the lives of his wife and son.  Revenge becomes his motivation.  In the follow up, the Road Warrior, Max is a scavenger wandering the wastelands.  His family's killers dead.  His motivations have changed, from revenge to survival.  In the end, he helps out a community of beleaguered innocents escape from post-apocalyptic marauders, because they've taken all that he had left.  He does it knowing that he will probably die, and good, because he doesn't give a shit any more.  Yet, in the end, he's able to not only survive, but save the life of a child doing so.  The crack begins to form.  And at the end of the third flick, Beyond Thunderdome, Max sacrifices his chance at paradise, so that a group of innocent children can live on and make for themselves a world of peace.

So here we have quiet the journey.  Max goes from being a Hero, to an Anti-Hero, back to being a Hero.  His story shows us that no, sometimes our morals cannot stand against the tyranny of the world.  But there is hope. Hope that we can once again find that righteous path, that Heroic path.

In closing, I'll say this.  The truly great characters of fiction possess both Heroic and Anti-Heroic qualities, much like real people.  No person in the world falls strictly into any one archetype, but often drifts between them, including villainy.  These characters show us one, very important thing.  The Hero must remain true to themselves by the end of the tale, while the Anti-Hero must become something more then they were.

I'd like to thank Ashleigh Hart for her blog post that inspired this entry.  Check it out, and all her others at http://www.comicbookdaily.com/columns/wham-bang-pow/antiheroes/ She's got a great take on all things comics and nerdy.  

Thanks for stopping by.