Heroes That Aren’t
March 24th, 2011
Heroic characters have their place in narrative fiction. Taking us along for the ride, they a drive a story forward to its inevitable conclusion. But what of stories that strive for something a little more elegant?
Throughout this series on Heroes we have covered learning heroes and teaching heroes, heroes who don’t change and the difference between what a hero wants and what a hero truly needs. But the one thing we have avoided, and perhaps the most important, is the concept of the hero itself.
They’re All The Same
There are many entrenched with the notion that Main Character, Protagonist and Hero are simply interchangeable words. Having lost the will to explore the subtle differences between these concepts of story structure, they simply throw their hands in the air and proclaim It’s all the same to me. Unfortunately, by doing so they rob these terms of any usefulness they may have had in constructing a meaningful story.
Building a story requires certain tools. Building a strong story requires accurate tools. Acting as if the blueprints or the right size nail doesn’t matter only guarantees a final product that will crumble into yet another heap of pointless forgotten drivel.
If story matters, then the tools to build it matter even more.
Caveats Abound In The Land Of The Hero
The definition of Hero:
- a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
- a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.
When it becomes a problem in story is when the character being described as a hero doesn’t quite live up to its noble definition. These become stories about tragic heroes, or anti-heroes, or dark heroes, or whatever perfunctory adjective one can quickly come up with. Whatever way it is twisted the pattern is clear: when you need to clarify what kind of a hero you have in a story, you have effectively destroyed whatever useful purpose that term ever had.
With the introduction of these various colors, as numerous as those in a double rainbow, the word hero reduces down to simply “who the story is about.” In that case, it might be more accurate to refer to this entity as the Main Character. Why bring into question the heroic nature of a character if it isn’t even a consideration?
This need to attribute additional information to a hero’s status is where the confusion in understanding story structure begins.
Heroes that don’t quite fit the bill
Luke Skywalker was a hero. So was Neo, Kirk and James Bond. William Wallace, George Bailey, Clarice Starling, Bruce Wayne, Paul Rusesabagina, Wikus Van De Merwe, Ree Dolly, Dom Cobb, Amelie, Hiccup, Simba, Woody and Remy could all be considered heroes. No need to tack on an adjective in order to justify their heroic status.
But what about Sarah Connor, Scout, Michael Clayton, Columbus, Hauptmann Wiesler, Bernie Lootz, Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch or even Joshua ‘J’ Cody from the fabulously intense Animal Kingdom? Like this second group, J was certainly the central character of the piece, but could he truly be called heroic? Maybe tragic hero, but again that need to qualify in order to provide accuracy pops up.
What about a character that perhaps is more familiar, like Rick in Casablanca? He ended up doing heroic things, but was he like that from the beginning of the story? Certainly not. He refused to stick his neck out for anyone. As a result, most would simply adjust his hero status with the term ‘reluctant hero’. Again, having to qualify a concept of story only points out the uselessness of it in accurate and meaningful discussion. The reason why one can’t call Rick an all-out hero? Simple—while he is the Main Character of the story, he is NOT the Protagonist.
Heroes are Both Main Character and Protagonist
Refer again to the first character list above: Luke, Neo, William, George, Clarice, Wikus, and so on—all these characters, while certainly what their individual stories are about, also happen to be the prime movers of the central plot of the story. This is the definition of a Protagonist, the one who pursues the successful resolution of the story’s problem set in place by the Inciting Incident. This dual conceit of being the character who the story is about and the one responsible for driving the plot forward was probably what they were really trying to describe when they first coined the term ‘hero’ way back when. This need to tack on qualifiers like ‘learning’ or ‘teaching’ or ‘reluctant’ or ‘anti-’ comes from a lack of awareness that the one who drives the story does not necessarily have to be the one who the story is about.
If They Don’t Pursue, They Are Not A Hero
Michael Clayton is about Michael Clayton, but it is really Karen who drives the story forward. Same with Sarah Connor in The Terminator. She is clearly the Main Character, but it is Reese (Michael Biehn) who drives the efforts forward against the big metal baddie from the future.
A similar structure exists with J (James Frecheville) in Animal Kingdom. The story centers around his emotional descent as we experience every gut-wrenching moment along with him. But it is through Det. Leckie (Guy Pearce), not J, that we witness a character pursuing a course of action against the disturbed Andrew ‘Pope’ Cody (Ben Mendelsohn). Joshua still has his resolved tested at the moment of crisis, as all Main Characters should, but when it comes to resolving the initial problem put into place by Pope’s return, it is 100% Leckie’s responsibility from beginning to end.
This is why one would never refer to J as a ‘hero’. It is almost laughable, especially considering the final outcome and the sophistication with which the rest of the story was told, to even consider such an approach. ‘Tragic hero’ would probably be the term that would be bantered about in film school discussions, but again this would only serve to muddle the conversation and perhaps inspire an attitude that all story theory is subjective. A result that would be both defeatist and non-productive.
Save the term hero for the character who pursues the story goal and is the character with which we the audience empathize most with; the character we the Audience are in the story. This approach makes the most sense and very often clarifies the nagging notions that something isn’t quite right about calling a particular character a “hero.” Killing off the qualifiers should be job one for those interested in authentic and meaningful storytelling.
Advanced Story Theory for this Article
This concept of splitting the hero into equal parts Main Character and Protagonist was ‘discovered’ (rather uncovered) by the Dramatica theory of story in the mid-90s of the previous century. The concept is so revolutionary and so obvious once fully grokked that it basically becomes the gateway drug into learning more and more about the theory. If this structure paradigm was insightful enough to point out this elegant feature of stories, then surely it must have more to say about what is really going on within a story.
Those interested in writing stories with purpose would do well to learn all they can.