Heroes Versus Villains
by Elizabeth Solar
I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.
– Billy Joel
When I first shared my novel pages with a beta group, one member said she wasn’t sure she liked my protagonist, because “She’s not a nice person.” Another reader commented, although the character’s morals were questionable, she was intrigued to see what the ‘hero’ would do next. The reader felt compelled to follow my protagonist’s journey.
Classic literature is packed with flawed characters: Anna Karenina, whose selfish indiscretions did not end well, Holden Caufield’s cynicism, self-deception and hypocrisy. Shakespeare’s Romeo enters his scene pining for a former flirtation, until his undeveloped frontal lobe leads him into a star-crossed romance. How about ‘The Girl on the Train,’ ‘Gone Girl,’ “Sharp Objects,’ or almost any contemporary novel that features a woman undone?
On TV, anti-heroes from Game of Throne’s Tyrion Lannister to Breaking Bad’s Walter White capture our hearts, as they slice right through them. If loving Mad Men’s Don Draper is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Don’t even get me started on Jessica Jones, and her rag-o-holic superpower forays. Or as Jessica Rabbit might say, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”
Many of today’s heroes alternate between good and evil, sometimes becoming the villain. It depends upon what kind of day they are having.
What do these anti/heroes have that make them so irresistible? Humanity. Relatability. The ability to make us care. Let’s face it. The most iconic, most indelible literary heroes cease to be characters, but three-dimensional people, full engaged and alive. Do we want nice? Too bland. What about perfection? Unattainable in real life, and so irritating. Literature is not a popularity contest. It provides a portal into the exploration of the human condition. When our characters crackle with life, we invite the reader to interact, and care about the story, since it features real live people in their brooding, insecure, sometimes murderous, loving, self-destructive and adulterous splendor. Just like us.
While Tolstoy shows Anna Karenina as selfish and deceptive, he allows her to show tenderness to her child, and exposes her vulnerability. Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara morphs from being a vain, petty, headstrong southern belle, to a hard-working, courageous, and sometimes kind leader whose mission is to save her one true love: Tara. She’s still Scarlett but channels her headstrong ways for a greater good. Our flaws can be our greatest strength.
Likewise, we often fall into the trap of drawing our villain, or antagonist, as one-dimensional. Even ‘bad’ people like their dogs, give to charity, have a strong work ethic, and usually carry an emotional scar that makes them vulnerable (even if they choose destructive ways to show it). It’s true in life, and it’s true in literature. Cormac McCarthy’s
No Country for Old Men features one of the most menacing, yet principled villains/antagonists in literature. Anton Chigurh, is a psychopathic hit man dedicated to his values. If he makes a promise to take someone out, gosh darn it, he makes good on it. It is a point of honor to keep his word no matter the carnage his actions provoke.
Besides, isn’t the point of an antagonist/villain to provide a foil for the antagonist, someone, or something to provide a barrier to what our hero wants? In that way, the law-enforcing FBI, an innocent by-stander, or competing mobster serve as barriers to Tony Soprano’s mission to maintain his standing as head of his crime family, while working on his personal growth with an increasingly nervous shrink.
We are messy, complicated little creatures, full of contradictions. When we insert this reality into our writing, we not only come up with more interesting characters, but someone we can care about, someone with whom we can share a human connection. And isn’t that why we read, and write?
