For those who want a knight in shining armor to ride in on a white horse and sweep them off their feet, making them swoon with their gentlemanly manners and flowing locks, they will be waiting a long time. Recent trends in literature have moved away from these sorts of heroes to deeply flawed protagonists, commonly known as the anti-hero. This seems like a negative thing at first glance: with all the bad in the world, why would a reader want to escape to a work of fiction that does not feature quintessential good guys?
The world needs its heroes; it needs people who are willing to walk into burning buildings with their heads held high. The admirability about someone who will not bend when it comes to issues of principle or morality is undeniable, and a fictional character is no different. There is a difference, however, between finding someone admirable and finding someone interesting. When it comes to fictional protagonists, the more internally conflicted or morally ambiguous they are, the more interesting I find the novel. Give me your greedy, your proud, your vengeful protagonists; these are the characters that have the power to bring a novel home.
Perhaps the first writer to develop the modern anti-hero was not a novelist, but a poet. In the epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, published in the early 1800s, Lord Byron introduces his readers to Conrad, a representation of Lord Byron himself and thus the perfect example of what has come to be called the “Byronic hero”. He’s obnoxious and pessimistic, subject to whims and mood swings, self-focused to a fault, but he is not without redeeming qualities.
The rest of the nineteenth century did not feature much in the way of the Byronic hero, but the roads were paved smooth for anti-heroes in the twentieth century by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The title character of his iconic novel The Great Gatsby is inarguably unlikable. Jay Gatsby is not brave, just, and good; he has an ego the size of his tremendous house parties and is single-sighted to the point of fault. He expects too much from the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. It is not enough for her to love him; she must also abandon every part of the life she had built without him.
It’s difficult for me to like Jay Gatsby. He lives blind to his privilege and has a sense of entitlement that would make it frightening to be in Daisy’s shoes. But despite his faults, and despite his not being the narrator, Gatsby is undeniably the protagonist of a novel lacking in heroes entirely. Fitzgerald does not display the brightest and shiniest individuals that he could dream up. Rather, The Great Gatsby showcases humanity in its glories but also in its faults. A woman does not need to fantasize about Jay Gatsby sweeping her off her feet: he’s everywhere. He surrounds us when we go to the grocery store, as we sit in a class, while we wait in line at the bank. Gatsby is you and me and everything that is conflicted and confused within us. This familiarity is precisely what makes Gatsby and other anti-heroes so culturally important: they showcase our faults in a way that is both readable and intensely personal.
The central purpose of literature is to entertain, and people who struggle with questions of morality are inherently entertaining. It seems that the literary field became aware of this during the twentieth century, as only a handful of anti-heroes were produced before F. Scott Fitzgerald introduced the world to Jay Gatsby in 1925. But Gatsby does not stand alone; in fact, he leads an entire movement of twentieth-century anti-heroes, from Scarlett O’Hara to Severus Snape.
Perhaps the most iconic anti-hero is Holden Caulfield. Holden is intensely unlikable, a moody, pessimistic, and lazy teenager. He’s not the hero of his own life, let alone of the J. D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye. He has no delusional ideas about how important he is in the world; the most redeeming quality he possesses, other than his affection for his younger sister, is self-awareness. Holden knows that he’s not likable. A lost feeling is woven into each page of the novel, which is powerful enough to leave the reader sympathizing with Holden and his hollowness. That is the true might of literature: I think Holden Caulfield is unbearable for the entirety of The Catcher in the Rye, from the first page when he bluntly refuses to discuss himself with his audience, through his pessimism, all the way up to the end of the novel, yet I feel for him.
Many anti-heroic traits are similar to the traits of a villain, but the difference between the two can be clearly highlighted by The Catcher in the Rye. I do not like Holden Caulfield. I wouldn’t want to be his friend, and I don’t aspire to emulate him in the slightest. Nevertheless, I wish nothing but the best for Holden. Logically, I know that his story ends on the final page, but I still hope that he finds happiness in the remainder of his fictional life. A villain does not receive fond wishes for the future from his readers.
Great literature of the twentieth century is significantly lacking in the hero department, but that’s not a bad thing. There is a purpose in reading, whether it be novels, poetry, or nonfiction, but that purpose has nothing to do with heroics. A Byronic hero allows someone else to make the big mistakes, leaves someone else with a fatal gunshot wound, or a view of a carousel and not much else.
He may not be strong in will and deed, and his morals might not stand up to the truest test of character, but I would read about Jay Gatsby over Mr. Darcy any day. I can appreciate someone who isn’t quite sure what he wants or what he should do in every situation. As the novel evolves to feature a wider variety of characters, it is right to feature more and more anti-heroes. Humanity is not perfect. Sometimes humanity is not even good. But that’s what makes humanity so human.
SD.
