anti-hero - History

A central character in a novel or play who deviates from or contradicts conventional values and behaviour. Famous examples are Hašek's hero in The Good Soldier Schweik (1921–3), and Yossarian in Heller's Catch-22 (1961).

In literature and film, an anti-hero has widely come to mean a fictional character who has some characteristics that are antithetical to those of the traditional hero. An anti-hero in today's books and films will perform acts generally deemed "heroic," but will do so with methods, manners, or intentions that may not be heroic. By 1992 the American Heritage Dictionary of the American Language defined an anti-hero only as "a main character in a dramatic or narrative work who is characterized by a lack of traditional heroic qualities, such as idealism or courage," not as a person who nevertheless performs heroic acts. In some instances, anti-hero has come to refer to a protagonist of a work whose actions and motives are villainous or questionable.

Thus, anti-heroes can be awkward, antisocial, alienated, cruel, obnoxious, passive, pitiful, obtuse, or just ordinary. 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 them and those they meet along the narrative. In other words, an anti-hero is a protagonist that lives by the guidance of their own moral compass, striving to define and construe their own values as opposed to those recognized by the society in which they live.

History

There is no definitive date when the anti-hero came into existence as a literary trope. Yet the anti-hero has evolved over time, changing as society's conceptions of the hero changed, from the Elizabethan times of Christopher Marlowe's Faust and William Shakespeare's Falstaff, to the darker-themed Victorian literature of the 19th century, such as Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug.

In modern times, the popularity of the anti-hero has seemingly boomed. The apparent selfish nature of an anti-hero is often revealed to be a facade used to survive in a harsh universe, from which the anti-hero is sometimes redeemed through an act of love or friendship, such as with Star Wars' Han Solo.

Many modern anti-heroes possess, or even encapsulate, the postmodern rejection of traditional values symptomatic of Modernist literature in general, as well as the disillusion felt after World War II and the Nuclear Age. It has been argued that continuing popularity of the anti-hero in modern literature and popular culture may be based on the recognition that a person is fraught with human frailties, unlike the archetypes of the white-hatted cowboy and the noble warrior, and is therefore more accessible to readers and viewers.

The values surrounding the characterization of an anti-hero have arguably changed. The brooding vigilante or "noble criminal" stereotype of characters like Batman is slowly becoming part of the popular conception of heroic valor rather than characteristics that are deemed un-heroic.