Hi.
I'm working on a project and I'm trying to approach the basic theme of hero and anti-hero (not "villain"). I'm fairly sure we all know what heroes are, so...
How do you define an anti-hero?
Literary Question: Definition of Anti-Hero?
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FrustratedPilot
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151 "antihero" wn "WordNet (r) 1.6"
antihero
n : a protagonist who lacks the characteristics that would make
him a hero (or her a heroine)
Sometimes dictionaries just don't live up to your hopes.
Anyway, good examples of an anti-hero are Arthur Dent in H2G2, Woody Allen's charcter in Sleeper (and almost all of his other personas), Inspector Gadget, Inspector Clouseau, and (if I may be so bold) Dave in CRFH.
Perhaps and boardy with a quicker mind and better turn of phrase can boil that down into something catchy that rolls nicely off the tongue.
antihero
n : a protagonist who lacks the characteristics that would make
him a hero (or her a heroine)
Sometimes dictionaries just don't live up to your hopes.
Anyway, good examples of an anti-hero are Arthur Dent in H2G2, Woody Allen's charcter in Sleeper (and almost all of his other personas), Inspector Gadget, Inspector Clouseau, and (if I may be so bold) Dave in CRFH.
Perhaps and boardy with a quicker mind and better turn of phrase can boil that down into something catchy that rolls nicely off the tongue.
E(tmdg)M-BFF-A-W---FCtX+Kc--KtC++Ll++
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LordNicodareus
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I think...and dont quote me on this, but an anti hero is either a person who does good although their motives are entirly their own(like Stu throwing the knife cause he saw a chance to do it and get away), or a villan who does good because he forced to, through some outside means(cant think of an example). I'll ask my friend, since she was pretty sure what an anti hero was though. Hope this helps
A man said to the Universe: "I Exist!", To which the Universe replied: "But that does not create in Me a sense of Obligation."
Stephen Crane
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T Campbell
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There are basically 2 different types of anti-heroes, almost diametrically opposed, and it's really sort of silly to use the same term for both of them, but people do.
1) A non-heroic, sometimes almost villainous person, who does heroic things and saves the day. Clint Eastwood in the "Dollar" movies, for instance.
2) A person in the role of a protagonist who is a sympathetic character, but does NOT behave in a heroic fashion, and who survives -- if he does -- primarily through luck. The Arthur Dent types, in other words.
There may be other kinds of anti-heroes if I thought about it deeper, but these two jump out and strike you in the face. Both the villainous heroes and the likable schmucks have been referred to as "anti-heroes," which is both accurate and useless: they are both unlike traditional heroes, but they share no other trait in common.
Steve Bolhafner
1) A non-heroic, sometimes almost villainous person, who does heroic things and saves the day. Clint Eastwood in the "Dollar" movies, for instance.
2) A person in the role of a protagonist who is a sympathetic character, but does NOT behave in a heroic fashion, and who survives -- if he does -- primarily through luck. The Arthur Dent types, in other words.
There may be other kinds of anti-heroes if I thought about it deeper, but these two jump out and strike you in the face. Both the villainous heroes and the likable schmucks have been referred to as "anti-heroes," which is both accurate and useless: they are both unlike traditional heroes, but they share no other trait in common.
Steve Bolhafner
Vitriol wrote:
Stephen Donaldson's 'Thomas Covenant' is probably the best example of an anti-hero I've ever found. Good series, too.
Aaarrgh! Not the actively unreadable Stephen Donaldson! (attempts to throw monitor across the room: strains back; sits down carefully).
Sorry, but for me that sequence is so unpleasent that I eventually found myself unable to pick up the second volume, never mind open it to the last page I had got to.
Anyway, FP, to answer your question, damned if I know, but I know someone who does (consults the resident expert: Kate, whats an anti-hero?)
The anti-hero is the antithesis of the heroic ideal.
from Penguin dictionary of Literary Terms:
the anti-hero - a type who is incompetent, unlucky, tactless, clumsy, cack-handed, stupid, buffoonish, - is of ancient lineage and is to be found for instance in the Greek New Comedy. An early and outstanding example in European literature is the endearing figure of the eponymous knight of Don Quixote.
It goes on to cite Tristram Shandy, The Good Soldier Schweik, Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger and Yossarian in Catch-22. Kate's first thought was of Byron: - handsome, wrote beautiful poetry, arrogant, all-round ratbag, fled the country to escape debt, got mixed up in the Greek civil war - - -
Muttley
Married to an English Teacher...
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Muttley on 2002-04-03 14:39 ]</font>
Stephen Donaldson's 'Thomas Covenant' is probably the best example of an anti-hero I've ever found. Good series, too.
Aaarrgh! Not the actively unreadable Stephen Donaldson! (attempts to throw monitor across the room: strains back; sits down carefully).
Sorry, but for me that sequence is so unpleasent that I eventually found myself unable to pick up the second volume, never mind open it to the last page I had got to.
Anyway, FP, to answer your question, damned if I know, but I know someone who does (consults the resident expert: Kate, whats an anti-hero?)
The anti-hero is the antithesis of the heroic ideal.
from Penguin dictionary of Literary Terms:
the anti-hero - a type who is incompetent, unlucky, tactless, clumsy, cack-handed, stupid, buffoonish, - is of ancient lineage and is to be found for instance in the Greek New Comedy. An early and outstanding example in European literature is the endearing figure of the eponymous knight of Don Quixote.
It goes on to cite Tristram Shandy, The Good Soldier Schweik, Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger and Yossarian in Catch-22. Kate's first thought was of Byron: - handsome, wrote beautiful poetry, arrogant, all-round ratbag, fled the country to escape debt, got mixed up in the Greek civil war - - -
Muttley
Married to an English Teacher...
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Muttley on 2002-04-03 14:39 ]</font>
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Kouban no Hakase
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I don't have any problem calling Arthur Dent a hero. We know he's a nice guy; he's just been thrown into situations that he doesn't know how to handle. Frodo Baggins just got used to the adventuring lifestyle a little quicker. 
T: I've always thought of it that way too... an anti-hero is a protagonist who isn't necessarily a 'good guy'. I would recommend Vic in Harlan Ellison's short story "A Boy and His Dog".
T: I've always thought of it that way too... an anti-hero is a protagonist who isn't necessarily a 'good guy'. I would recommend Vic in Harlan Ellison's short story "A Boy and His Dog".
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Maccabee
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It was my impression that Byron, though dissolute through much of his life, went to Greece out of genuine idealism. He was a mix of the classicist and the romanticist, and both intellectual strains in him pushed him to go forth and liberate Greece, mother of civilization.
Yes, I know Greece isn't really the mother of civilization -- like us, the Hellenes seem tall because they stood on the shoulders of giants. But they had the rep.
Here was a chance for Byron and others like him to do something heroic and meaningful. He was going to give back everything he had to the land that so inspired him. The Philhellenes who lived came out of it disillusioned -- Greece in the 1820s reminds me of Palestine today, or better yet Croatia 10 years ago, right down to the mutual targeting of civilians. But their motives were (mostly) pure. Byron at least didn't show up expecting to be made a general one day, a noble the next, and king a week from Tuesday the way some of the less sympathetic Philhellenes did.
Maccabee
Yes, I know Greece isn't really the mother of civilization -- like us, the Hellenes seem tall because they stood on the shoulders of giants. But they had the rep.
Here was a chance for Byron and others like him to do something heroic and meaningful. He was going to give back everything he had to the land that so inspired him. The Philhellenes who lived came out of it disillusioned -- Greece in the 1820s reminds me of Palestine today, or better yet Croatia 10 years ago, right down to the mutual targeting of civilians. But their motives were (mostly) pure. Byron at least didn't show up expecting to be made a general one day, a noble the next, and king a week from Tuesday the way some of the less sympathetic Philhellenes did.
Maccabee
Risus est telum ultimum contra tyrranidem. Nullus dictator exercitibus totiis ridiculem vulgi longe resistere potest.
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Manticoraus
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If its comics its the guys who have a bad attitude dress in black swear and in short trounce on the comics code. Villains who happen to shoot bad guys.
According some English teachers and Master of the Obvious...at some point. The anti-hero is someone who can't afford or doesn't have the ability to change his situation or act to change his situation. They cite Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye.
Holden notices all these wrongdoings but doesn't change them and really ends up part of the problem more often than not.
According some English teachers and Master of the Obvious...at some point. The anti-hero is someone who can't afford or doesn't have the ability to change his situation or act to change his situation. They cite Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye.
Holden notices all these wrongdoings but doesn't change them and really ends up part of the problem more often than not.
I should have known better: ask a teacher for an answer and you get an essay! Ooops; argh, I'm being displaced - - -
This thread has become snarled and needs rewinding into some semblance of order. There are several things in the mess that I would like to comment upon, so I will take each in turn.
1. Anti-hero: Muttley had given a more than adequate definition, and the one that I have least quarrel with. This is the benchmark! This is the definition of anti-hero I have always taught, up to university entrance standard for Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, St Andrews, etc. (can't remember where else my students have ended up over the last 24 years!)
2. A good example of a modern anti-hero would be Rabbit in John Updyke's 'Rabbit Run'. I could, given time, make a respectable case for Bilbo Baggins or Leopold Bloom in Joyces's 'Ulysses, who wanders about observing and acting as a catalyst, without being proactive.
3. Thomas Covenant is a badly drawn pillock, not an anti-hero. I see Muttley has nicked my 'actively unreadable' tag for Mr Donaldson: my copy of his deeply depressing and badly flawed tome ended up in the loo after I tried to read it in the bath. It was that or drown myself...
The language is stilted, the grammar poor, and the narrative badly planned. The editor needs to be taken severely to task for not having taken a hatchet to it. There is barely sufficient substance in the whole series of The White Gold Wielder to furnish a single short story.
4. Sub-divide as you will, there's only one definition of anti-hero. Mr Eastwood's character in the Dollar movies is more a reluctant hero than an anti-hero. Literature also has a fair few of these. Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester is a classic example: starts as a philaderer, progresses to attempted bigamy, and then almost kills himself trying to save the mad wife.
5. Thinking things through a litle more carefully, I would place Byron in a separate class altogether: reluctant villan! His life was so shambolic that the poor man had little chance of developing into anything else. Given the combined handicaps of extravagant good looks, unwarranted arrogance, and inherited debt, it's little wonder he turned out so well! An anarchist before his time.
6. The anti-hero is not incapable of altering his circumstances: frequently his troubles arise from attempting to do precisely that. Tristram Shandy is a good example here. The anti-hero's attempts may have unforseen consequences, but the ability to change is there. The anti-hero may compound the problem to some extent along the way, but provides the solution in the end.
The whole joy of literary criticism is inherent in its incestuous relationship with that which feeds it. There are no absolutes, and any opinion counts so long as one bases it firmly upon evidence from the texts one is studying.
Kate
Teacher in remission!
This thread has become snarled and needs rewinding into some semblance of order. There are several things in the mess that I would like to comment upon, so I will take each in turn.
1. Anti-hero: Muttley had given a more than adequate definition, and the one that I have least quarrel with. This is the benchmark! This is the definition of anti-hero I have always taught, up to university entrance standard for Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, St Andrews, etc. (can't remember where else my students have ended up over the last 24 years!)
2. A good example of a modern anti-hero would be Rabbit in John Updyke's 'Rabbit Run'. I could, given time, make a respectable case for Bilbo Baggins or Leopold Bloom in Joyces's 'Ulysses, who wanders about observing and acting as a catalyst, without being proactive.
3. Thomas Covenant is a badly drawn pillock, not an anti-hero. I see Muttley has nicked my 'actively unreadable' tag for Mr Donaldson: my copy of his deeply depressing and badly flawed tome ended up in the loo after I tried to read it in the bath. It was that or drown myself...
The language is stilted, the grammar poor, and the narrative badly planned. The editor needs to be taken severely to task for not having taken a hatchet to it. There is barely sufficient substance in the whole series of The White Gold Wielder to furnish a single short story.
4. Sub-divide as you will, there's only one definition of anti-hero. Mr Eastwood's character in the Dollar movies is more a reluctant hero than an anti-hero. Literature also has a fair few of these. Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester is a classic example: starts as a philaderer, progresses to attempted bigamy, and then almost kills himself trying to save the mad wife.
5. Thinking things through a litle more carefully, I would place Byron in a separate class altogether: reluctant villan! His life was so shambolic that the poor man had little chance of developing into anything else. Given the combined handicaps of extravagant good looks, unwarranted arrogance, and inherited debt, it's little wonder he turned out so well! An anarchist before his time.
6. The anti-hero is not incapable of altering his circumstances: frequently his troubles arise from attempting to do precisely that. Tristram Shandy is a good example here. The anti-hero's attempts may have unforseen consequences, but the ability to change is there. The anti-hero may compound the problem to some extent along the way, but provides the solution in the end.
The whole joy of literary criticism is inherent in its incestuous relationship with that which feeds it. There are no absolutes, and any opinion counts so long as one bases it firmly upon evidence from the texts one is studying.
Kate
Teacher in remission!
I think we can all agree that Byron, at the age of 36, went to Greece to die a soldier's death, thus becoming even more the typified romantic figure heOn 2002-04-03 15:22, Maccabee wrote:
It was my impression that Byron, though dissolute through much of his life, went to Greece out of genuine idealism...
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Maritza_Campos
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Aris Katsaris
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Eek - that's clearly the definition of "antihero" that I don't have myself - in a post I had written which got devoured by the machine I was using Bilbo exactly as a counter-example to this...Among my favorite antiheroes are Don Quixote, Bilbo and Frodo.
Bilbo and Frodo are just heroes in my mind, nothing "anti-" about them... On the other hand some of the other characters of Tolkien, like Turin Turambar, who has the strength to kill dragons but also is too quick to strike, ending up killing even innocents in his fits of rage, dooming whole kingdoms because of his arrogance and stupidity - *that's* an antihero, in my definition...
An anti-hero in my mind must have a negative characteristic which is in excess than most people... Most physical weaknesses don't matter for the same way that a "crippled" hero does not become "anti"-hero because of his handicap - but more so because his weakness makes his bravery greater.
Rincewind, on the other hand, might be called an "anti-hero" because of excessive cowardice...
On the whole of the definitions stated here, T's is probably the one I'm closest to, I guess...
This thread has driffted a bit off-path. I only wanted to agree about the unreadable nature of the Covenant books. I could barely make it through the first book because I despised the main character so strongly. When someone is handed superpowers they should use them for good and evil. Using them for whining is not an available option.
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Shatteredtower
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It's a little late to declare that now, you know. It's a done deal - the prohibition has been lifted.On 2002-04-03 17:50, Grifter wrote:
When someone is handed superpowers they should use them for good and evil. Using them for whining is not an available option.
Hey, people have always whined about the power they didn't have - why not about the power that interferes with them having what they want?
I didn't care for the series, but it was an attempt to do something new. That may not excuse it, but it doesn't damn it in my eyes either.
The one thing I will say in Thomas Covenant's favour is that nobody I've known has ever claimed that he was a cool character.
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KingLeon
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(Hey, I LIKED the Thomas Covenant series... For one thing, it made me realize I'd read of heroes who had killed entire cities off before, and were redeemed later more or less, and yet SOMEHOW, even I couldn't forgive him for his... act. It's something Terry Pratchett points out alot in Discworld... Killing someone un-important doesn't shock a reader of fantasy... because they weren't important... but I'll say one thing... writing about Covenant's actions (which somehow disgust us MORE than killing entire cities) must'a taken GUTS.)
I don't know why, but when I saw the title of this thread, I thought the General. She's changing destiny (MAYBE for the better, maybe not), through a very terrible and awful way... She thinks she is a hero, she believes it. MAYBE she is (If the Terminator had been sent to kill the mother of the Anti-Christ, THEN what would you have felt? Maybe the General is stopping a terrible thing from happening). But she's going about it in a horrifying way...
I don't know why, but when I saw the title of this thread, I thought the General. She's changing destiny (MAYBE for the better, maybe not), through a very terrible and awful way... She thinks she is a hero, she believes it. MAYBE she is (If the Terminator had been sent to kill the mother of the Anti-Christ, THEN what would you have felt? Maybe the General is stopping a terrible thing from happening). But she's going about it in a horrifying way...
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Ray Radlein
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I thought it was a hero who's your father's sister... no, wait.. that's Aunty Hero. Nevermind...
Regarding Thomas Covenant, I'd be more impressed with Donaldson's "courage" in writing such a character if so many female characters in his other books didn't also end up getting raped. He seems a bit too interested in this for my comfort. That being said, I DID think the series (at least the first series) was a well-written and intelligent fantasy book. It's probably the best book that I refuse to recomment to anyone.
When I was thinking about suggesting things for Karen to read, this wasn't even a hint of a possibility.
Regarding Thomas Covenant, I'd be more impressed with Donaldson's "courage" in writing such a character if so many female characters in his other books didn't also end up getting raped. He seems a bit too interested in this for my comfort. That being said, I DID think the series (at least the first series) was a well-written and intelligent fantasy book. It's probably the best book that I refuse to recomment to anyone.
When I was thinking about suggesting things for Karen to read, this wasn't even a hint of a possibility.