062: What Makes a Hero?

The beginning of a mini-series

Hi everyone,

I’m writing to you from New York. I’m staying at a friend’s apartment on the northernmost tip of Manhattan, and it’s a wonderful change of pace from the other times I’ve stayed in NYC. Those times, I didn’t know anyone—or the city—so I stayed in loud hostels, remote hotels, and once (memorably) in a hotel near Times Square that only had sheer curtains on the windows, so the room was bathed in the LED cacophony of Times Square all night long. This is infinitely more pleasant!

I’m here on a research trip. There’s still one more round of edits for UNRULY FIGURES, but I’m feeling mentally ready to get started on the next non-fiction project. And there’s little I love more than diving into archives, which I got to do for two days at the New York Public Library this week.

You might remember that I’m also already about a quarter through a fiction book! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with working on more than one writing project at once, as long as you have the time for it and can keep your stories straight.* There was some light research for it that also benefitted from access to the NYPL archive, which was great.

I used to be a pantser, when it came to writing, as opposed to a planner. But the story I’m working on now has required that I plan everything in detail, which has led me to interrogate** the writing conventions that I’ve long simply accepted. All this got me thinking about archetypes in general, and specifically heroes and anti-heroes. Who is the classic hero in my work-in-progress? Are there anti-heroes in UNRULY FIGURES? (Yes, absolutely.) Why do these archetypes work time after time? Do they actually still work?

So I wanted to do a little mini-series about heroes. Because I think—suspect—that the concept of the hero has changed a little in the last 15 or so years. So let’s go.

*Would an essay on how to balance multiple writing projects be something y’all would be interested in reading someday? Let me know in the comments!

**Interrogate sounds so obnoxious, doesn’t it? It’s academic-speak for “question, wonder about, revisit, and generally think, ‘is this right, should this change’?” Can you tell I’ve been in the archives for too long already?

Hero, protagonist, good guy. These are usually thrown around as synonyms when people talk about fiction, but they’re not entirely. At least, not anymore. For generations of classic literature and storytelling, they were. The protagonist was a hero, who is generally a good guy doing the right thing. Today, the protagonist can be a terrible person (think, The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersessian) or a little more blurred. They’re still the main character, but calling them ‘a good guy’ would be pushing it.

Source.

Personally, I think this is what makes modern storytelling fascinating. There’s still room, of course, for our traditional archetypes of heroes, but questioning them and putting them in new contexts makes them more interesting.

So, for our purposes, let’s dissect two of the terms I mentioned:

• Protagonist: The leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text. (from Oxford English Dictionary.)

• Hero: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. (from Oxford English Dictionary.)

  • the chief male character in a book, play, or movie, who is typically identified with good qualities, and with whom the reader is expected to sympathize.

  • (in mythology and folklore) a person of superhuman qualities and often semidivine origin, in particular one whose exploits were the subject of ancient Greek myths.

Note that the definition of ‘protagonist’ does not put a moral imperative on the character to ‘do the right thing’!

To me, the OED definition of ‘hero’ is particularly interesting because it’s really the definition of a classic hero archetype. But in fiction, there are actually multiple kinds of heroes. I’m going to break down each in the rest of this series, but here’s a quick overview:

• The Classic Hero: This is the OED definition. A classic hero is the one slaying dragons, saving villages, and generally being perfect. And that’s because classic heroes represent all that we value about humans. They’re generally courageous, ethical, intelligent, athletic, loyal, and good-looking. Sometimes they’re funny, but often they’re not. Not because being funny is bad, but because when someone is perfect and then also hilariously funny, it’s too much and no one believes it! We’ll get into that more when I cover classic heroes in detail.

• The Everyman Hero: This is your good guy. They’re not particularly brave or attractive or intelligent, they’re not a star athlete or super-powered in any way. In fact, their life might have been normal—boring, even—if the story hadn’t put them in a position where they had to act. That’s what makes them a hero. In the face of fear or under threat of death, the everyman hero does the right thing. They’re us. They live their lives, get stuck in a situation where they have to rise up to challenge, then go on to live their lives again.

• The Anti-Hero: This is not a villain, but not a good guy. Anti-heroes usually embody qualities we don’t like about ourselves. They might be intelligent, but they’re snarky or conceited about it. They might be athletic, but a showboat about it. They’re often sneaky, sarcastic, and dishonest when it benefits them. Sometimes they’re very funny, and they’re usually good-looking. They might start out as outcasts, or even on the antagonist’s side, but decide to reluctantly help another Hero. But despite all of this, Anti-Heroes are often our favorite characters, and we’ll go into why when I cover anti-heroes in depth.

• The Tragic Hero: To be honest, I go back and forth with whether a tragic hero is really a subset of Hero. Tragic heroes are arguably Everyman Heroes or Classic Heroes, but their stories end sadly. Every hero has a flaw, but the Tragic Hero’s flaw is their fatal downfall. Tragic heroes never get to live a happily-ever-after. They may not even be remembered by the other characters in the story. We’ll talk more about why this is later.

Now, these are not my definitions, I’ve amalgamated them from several sources, including vague memories of middle school English class. What I didn’t remember as well was that in a lot of classic sources, there are actually two more heroes sub-types! I disagree that these are heroes, but for the sake of discussion, I’m including them here:

• The Epic Hero: Think, superhero. Classically, Epic Heroes are more than human. They are our mythological ideals, our demigod children of gods and humans, and they often come from noble birth. Which is why I don’t think this counts as a hero anymore! To wit:

  • The best qualities of the Epic Hero have already been adopted into the Classic Hero archetype.

  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe has single-handedly made popular the question of whether having super-human strength is even good and has complicated those superheroes enough that many of them qualify as Anti-Heroes (Black Widow) or Everyman Heroes (Ant-Man), not Epic Heroes. Super-human powers are no longer special enough to be enough to differentiate one hero from other types of heroes.

  • And most importantly, that pesky idea that an epic hero has to be born of noble birth. The implication is that only upper-class, wealthy people qualify, which makes many readers cringe today. Going back to the OED’s definition of ‘hero’ as ‘a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities,’ the Epic Hero born of wealth doesn’t qualify in today’s world. We are getting rid of the idea that wealth equals moral superiority. The realization over time has been that many people use their wealth to do and cover up terrible things; upper-class people are no longer admired just because they’re upper class.

• The Byronic Hero: Made famous by Lord Byron (hence the name) Byronic Heroes are your prickly, brooding guys. In fiction, he usually ends up being a decent guy, but you have to get past an ungracious, inscrutable, off-putting exterior first. My issue with Byronic heroes is mostly just that, well, didn’t I just describe an Anti-Hero? The Byronic Hero does the right thing in the end, he’s just a bit of a dick about it, and that’s Anti-Hero behavior. Furthermore, you might have noticed that I’m using he/him pronouns here because Byronic Heroes are almost never women! Every other hero archetype is gender-neutral, but Bryonic Heroes are almost exclusively men. (I’m putting ‘almost’ only so no one comes after me, but the truth is I can’t think of a single female character I’d classify as Byronic.) To me, that takes it out of archetype territory altogether. If it can’t be embodied by anyone across time and culture, it’s not an archetype.

I think the key to heroes is that they need to be aspirational in some way. For us to see them as heroes, we have to be able to see what they’re doing as impressive, and we have to yearn to be able to rise to the occasion in the same way. Even Tragic Heroes Anti-Heroes are aspirational in their own ways.

As our values change, what we aspire to changes as well. Over time, our heroes keep adapting to those shifting cultural tides, but certain values remain, like doing the right thing and caring for people. Our heroes move with us, and in some ways help us figure out what we care most about.

UPDATE: Here is the rest of the heroes series:

• Classic Heroes: Why Are They Always Orphans?

• Everyman Heroes: They’re Doing Their Best, Okay?

• What Makes a Hero “Tragic”?

• What Makes an Anti-Hero (And Why Are We Obsessed with Them)?

All right, those are the four hero archetypes (and the two I think we could throw away). I’m excited to dive into these more for the next few weeks! I’ll explore how to write them, what makes a hero work, and how heroes define their own villains. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments.

Last week, an article I wrote for Fresh Cup went live. It’s about mourning and coffee and all the coffee shops we lost during the pandemic. You can check it out here.

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