The+Antihero




 * The Antihero**

It’s a fact of life: no one is perfect; it's something that we’ve all learned one way or another at this point. Everybody makes mistakes, and everyone has a lighter side to them. The same rules apply for fiction. In the past, characters in stories have always been at one side of the spectrum. Good or evil; white or black. But more recently, authors and writers have developed a new archetype, one more true to life (Bonnet).

The antihero in modern fiction and cinema has added an element to pop culture that has only been seen in the last century or so (Fitch). It’s a character that everyone can relate to. The antihero translates the real life idea that there are people in the middle of the spectrum, people that inhabit the gray area between black and white, into novels and movies.

An example of the antihero in mythology would be Homer’s Odysseus; the main character in the epic poem entitled __The Odyssey.__ When we first meet Odysseus, he is a man with nothing. And as we may know, a man that has nothing has nothing to lose. Odysseus was separated from his wife and his kingdom when he went off to fight the Trojan War, and __The Odyssey__ tells us of his long journey home. His travels span over many years, and over this time he does whatever he has to do to get home. Odysseus kills, steals, betrays and lies to get back to his wife and everything that is dear to him. Odysseus is a good example for the antihero because he does the wrong things for the right reasons; he is a man on a mission filled with violence and good intentions.

Another character in mythology that fits the role of the antihero is the apostle St. Paul. St. Paul was on a mission to destroy his sworn enemy: the Christians. He leads a violent persecution against the religion as a whole. On the road to Damascus, Paul experiences a “divine revelation” – he is blinded by the light of Christ and hears the voice of God (Fitch). This is seen as an epiphany to Paul and he then devotes the rest of his life to serving Christ and spreading the word of God according to the Christians.

The antihero has been shown a lot more in recent films, because it is a pretty new concept. The character Jules Winnfield, from Quentin Tarantino’s acclaimed __Pulp Fiction__, is possibly one of the best cases of this archetype there has ever been. Jules is a hit man, a killer; but he isn’t just the stock character of the oafish henchman, he’s someone that’s aware of a higher power, and has a greater sense of things. During the plot of the movie, this character is following the path that he believes God set for him, and he interprets signs from God to do the will of what he knows as a higher power. He does what he does because he knows he is where God wants him to be, and he waits for an indication of what to do next.

The archetypal antihero was created to mirror more realistic and human-like qualities in modern fiction. The antihero marks those that do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and vice versa. Reflecting the image of the bad guy that you root for from start to finish, antihero characters stand strong as icons of “bad ass” in today’s tales; a character that twists the hero and the villain together in a true life depiction of today’s ever-changing society.