The Everlasting Trope: Anti-Hero

Few things are more beloved and ubiquitous than the Anti-Hero. The term has come to encompass such a broad range of character types, from the simply less-that-sugary member of the good guy band, all the way to someone who only escapes utter, horrific villainhood by one or two actions, which are nevertheless significant actions.

So, as always, the questions here are:

1. Why does this trope exist and continue to resonate?
2. What causes the trope to fail?
3. What causes it to succeed?

For this one, I’m going to focus on the raison(s) d’etre, which I find to be the most interesting thing about this trope, and which largely answer questions two and three.

Bad is easy, Good is hard

Just like in real life, right?

That, to be honest, is something of an oversimplification, but it is the starting point of the Anti-hero. Bad is easy, good is hard. You will often find writers talking about how their villains just write themselves…not to say that a well-rendered villain is an easy thing to accomplish, but that there are no strictures on their behavior. They can do whatever they want.

The ‘good guys’ however are bound, if not by all virtues, at least by those which we feel they cannot do without and still be good. This leads to the stereotypical (and obnoxious) scene where the noble hero refuses to kill the bad guy and lets him get away, while we all groan inwardly knowing that our protagonist could have ended it right there if only they’d been a little more ruthless.

Of course a hero can be sometimes cruel or arrogant or flawed or whatever, but there are lines they cannot cross while still being the person we’re expected to root for. They have limitations. They are good, and in real life we are very glad for people around us to live by those limitations, but the narrow road is not always as easy to write or as entertaining to read.

Enter the style of anti-hero that is more or less a villain at the outset. He or she has the so-called “freedom” of evil. A deceptive freedom in real life, but certainly a helpful one for the author of such a character. They can be vile, dark, dangerous, vicious, and heartless.

But…sometimes they have a moment of mercy. An experience that casts light onto their shadows. Sometimes they fall in love (and are furious about that because it’s an interference). Sometimes their dark past garners sympathy, and the reader (or the writer) begins to wish this villain could someday escape the hole they’ve dug for themselves.

A redemption path begins to break out. If that path is taken, and followed for a while, an anti-hero (in the modern parlance at any rate) is born.

C.S. Lewis implied this “good is hard, bad is easy” principle with reference to his popular book Screwtape Letters. It is an epistolary style book written as though from a senior devil, or tempter, to a junior one who is trying his best to lead a particular “patient” to hell. Lewis mentioned that he had thought of writing an Angelic corollary, full of all the wisdom and strength to fight the temptations laid out in Screwtape Letters. But he stated that every line would have to “smell of heaven.” It couldn’t be merely ‘good advice,’ it would have to be divinity-soaked and holy. He gave up on the idea as being out of reach of his (extraordinary) talents.

It is much easier to write from the perspective of the devilish half we know so well, than the angelic half we struggle to realize. A good and noble character can be glorious, but is just as likely to come off as insipid or two-dimensional. Villains can also suffer from a thinness of character, especially when they are simply serving the role of “thing to be fought against” with no further explanation, but the Anti-hero exists because good is hard to render well without some admixture of evil (what else do we know?) and evil is difficult to render well without leaving some small window of hope for redemption. This comes, I think, from the strange dual impulse in us (quite apart from the difficulties in depiction) to disbelieve in the possibility of real good and real right, while also refusing to believe that someone can be beyond all rescue.

It’s actually a philosophical conundrum, and requires a bit of cognitive dissonance; part of us longs for the villain to be redeemable(ish), but we seem to doubt that there is anything to be redeemed to. The depths we can sometimes understand, but the heights seem to be beyond scope or capacity. In any case, the whole point of redemption, in its original meaning, is an utter reversal of status. Once slave, now free. Once damned, now divine. But since such a radical transition is not easily shown without seeming…well, manipulated, or fake, we usually go in for the halfway point. Either a slightly redeemed villain, or a somewhat fallen hero.

This bleeds into may next point:

Exploring Our Dark Side

The anti-hero is a platform for exploring the darker aspects of our own souls. We can do this with pure villains too, obviously, but–once again–the more deeply we identify with our villains, the more we desire their redemption, the closer they inch toward anti-hero.

But whether villain or anti-hero, it is much easier to explore the horrors and consequences of our own native cruelty, hatred, pride, rage, hard-heartedness, brokenness, and selfishness when we have that slight remove of building a character who is allowed to be all those things. We take that piece of ourselves (and maybe I shouldn’t say “we” but “I”…) and place it on paper and let it run where we dare not go, whether because of our deep convictions, or (frighteningly) because of mere conformity to conventions.

There are two directions this can take, one which I think is demonstrably…um…healthier than the other.

1. Acknowledgement: This is the healthier one, by my reckoning. This is where we use our pen to ‘probe our wounds,’ to repurpose a Lewis phrasing. It requires exploring our flaws in a way that does not try to evade their worst iterations, the true consequences. It’s admitting what exists, and trying to make something good out of it, maybe even trying to learn from it. I don’t mean writing a didactic story, but simply refusing to ‘cheat’ around that which is wrong or undesirable in us. Our characters don’t get off scot-free and, as the source of their most dangerous flaws, neither do we. In some cases, each and every character we create is like the result of a choose-your-own-adventure. What would happen if I followed that destructive road? What if I didn’t have the love, or support, or positive influences or beliefs that I have? What if I had given up in that dark moment of the soul? This tactic forces honesty and consequence.
2. Indulgence: This is where we explore our fascination with a broken moral compass, not to edify, but to indulge. To let that part of ourselves run free on the page to satisfy a craving, rather than to expose a truth. This is creating something for very light, unthinking consumption. It is fantasy, not in the genre sense, but in the psychological sense. We think it sounds cool to be a ruthless assassin with no moral code, so we make one and revel in the toughness and bad-assery we associate with that without ever going too deeply into the cold reality of such a thing. If I find that my character’s amorality simply looks cool, but never seems to cause anything but a vaguely menacing aura, then it is like smoking. Looks great, maybe even feels great, but the teeth yellow and the lungs rot.

A great example of how these two tracks play out is through the lens of the classic Revenge Story. I am not partial to the revenge story myself, but it is very popular in both the following forms:

In the “acknowledgement” story, the Anti-Hero/Protagonist sets out to avenge and, while they usually succeed, the process often destroys them as well. They are left broken after breaking so much, and they don’t get back what they lost. The futility of revenge is usually the main theme in such stories.

In the “indulgence” story, there are a lot of “satisfying” moments of revenge and “cool” violence and the story usually ends right after the epic culmination of the revenge plot, with the protagonist walking off into the sunset, blood-covered, but ‘fulfilled.’

If you can’t tell, I have a decided distaste for such a story, because it is such an obvious falsehood. I know a lot of people like this as simple fun popcorn fare, but it irks me to no end.

In any case, this is where, in fiction, we dally with that which we would shun in reality. I don’t think this is particularly admirable, but I have found the tendency to be true of myself at times. I want to work within the character of a hardened killer, or a ruthless ruler…but I would hope and pray I never have to deal with such things in reality, and I will not be so “intrigued” if/when I do.

The Romance of Tragedy and Danger

The tragedy part of this is pretty straightforward. Tragic backstories garner sympathy, draw us in, and are intriguing in their complexity. A character need not be an anti-hero to have a tragic backstory, but anti-heroes usually have one, or are implied to have one. In the original meaning of the anti-hero, they stood in contrast to the farmboy with the courageous spirit, kind heart, and noble motivations. Maybe they fought alongside the farmboy, but the anti-hero has a cruel streak, and acts selfishly. Why? Tragic backstory.

And the romance aspect of this was pretty well summed up by Anne of Green Gables, when she spoke of her own “wicked” protagonists.

“I wouldn’t marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I’d like it if he could be wicked, and wouldn’t.”

This is where you get the “bad boy” tropes, and the villain love-interest types. Villainy, for all the we claim to be against it, can be attractive to us.

I have a couple of ideas as to why this is (though I’m sure my list is not exhaustive):

-We like the idea that a villain goes out of his or herself towards the love interest. If the villain falls in love (or, often as not, in lust) it shows a weakness, a breakage in the armor. This seems to speak to the value, beauty, strength, or character of the one the villain/Anti-Hero desires. Perhaps we picture how this would be if we were the protagonist. For example, if the villain begins to lose his single-minded intensity towards his evil aims, and that’s happening because of little old me? Or little old her? Little old him? What does that say about the quality of a character who can draw someone right off of their dangerous path like that? They must be amazing.

But it’s not as amazing if the hurdle of ‘tragic backstory’ or ‘villainous tendencies’ were not there to be overcome.

-In fiction, we find danger romantic. We envision ourselves, or our characters, standing noble and brave against an onslaught of evil or cruelty. It’s hard to show the brilliance of perseverance and courage if there is nothing to be courageous about. Villains (well-drawn) show the hero’s courage in the strongest light. But this is usually more powerful if we have an emotional connection with the villain as well, or perceive a fraught connection between the hero and the villain. The brings tension and pain into the contrast between good and evil. It hints at the ifs, and whats, and maybes of the villain’s past, present, and future.

And then we’re sad to see the villain stay fully a villain. We have, in an effort to cultivate emotion and empathy, fallen a bit in love with them (romantic or otherwise) and it can be hard to leave them to their destruction. Sometimes they stay a villain, and it’s all the more tragic because they almost, almost became an Anti-hero.

And an Anti-Hero lives in the perpetual state of potential Hero. They live in that halfway point between destruction and redemption. And maybe that’s just really, really recognizable to us.