Last week I wrote about information dumps, offering sketches of Valencia, Brad, and Joan.
You might have noticed that all three fit the antihero characterization. They aren’t the type of people most of us would seek to spend much time with in real life. So why should they be in a book, particularly as main characters?
According to Dictionary.com, an antihero is:
a protagonist who lacks the attributes that make a heroic figure, as nobility of mind and spirit, a life or attitude marked by action or purpose, and the like
Admittedly, most Christian novels and Christian romance novels don’t focus on antiheroes. But if you have decided to create an anti-hero, why would your reader want to stick with your story?
Most likely, your reader knows someone in real life who reminds him of the antihero. Haven’t we all met the braggart, the narcissist, or worse? Here is what I think a reader might be trying to learn through fiction featuring an antihero:
- How the antihero thinks and why he acts as he does. Through fiction, readers can get a glimpse into why some people are not pleasant, and come away with understanding.
- How characters around the antihero respond and react. Are these methods and choices successful? How can the reader apply them to her own life?
- To live a revenge fantasy. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a villain get his comeuppance? Even when the reader is obedient to the Lord in real life by not exacting revenge, seeing a fictional antihero fail can offer an emotional release.
- Witnessing an antihero’s redemption. What methods do the characters around the antihero use to help him become a better person? What works? What doesn’t?
- God’s role in the characters’ lives makes a difference. Can they see God at work?
These are only a few reasons I think some readers enjoy reading books with antiheroes. I’m sure you have ideas of your own!
Your turn:
Do you like books with antiheroes? Why?
What is the best book you’ve read featuring an antihero?
Waiting for Perfect
My opinion is that stories with antiheroes can be great stories. I do like to see the antihero change for the better during the story or at the end of the story.
I love anti-heroes because they’re a representation of what’s inside us all. Every human being has a “shadow side”–evil desires, evil intentions. Anti-heroes are extremely relatable because we see ourselves in them, though they often make us uncomfortable because they commit acts we only feel the urge to commit.
Not every person’s life ends with a conversion. In fact, most don’t. Not every story needs a happy ending, despite our obsession with comfort. In fact, discomfort is one of the primary tools God uses to urge us to continue pursuing him. We often fall into the subconscious belief that God cares much more than he does for our comfort. In reality, his primary concern is for our worship and personal holiness. If coming face to face with our inner darkness grown to full stature can wake us up to our daily need for God’s mercy and transformative power, that’s far better than being lulled into a false sense of positivity. We need much encouragement in our lives, but sometimes what we need is a wake-up call.
Wow. Everything you said here, is exactly my perspective. Lately, I’ve been drawn to the exploration of that “shadow side” of humanity.
For my second book, I’m writing a continuation story, but from an anti-hero secondary character’s POV. People have asked me if she will come to Christ by the end of the book and to be honest, I really don’t know. I’m not sure that’s Alana’s story. I know God will be present throughout the story. And I know Alana will seek and find ‘recovery’ to some extent, but at this point, that’s all I know. Coming face-to-face with inner darkness. I think that’s where her story is.
I’m also starting another book that I’m not sure will ever be read by anyone else, but I feel I need to write it. It’s another story connected to book one, but from the villain’s POV. I’m not exactly sure why, but I feel compelled to explore his story.
Sounds like an intriguing direction, Theresa!
My debut novel was based on Cain from Genesis 4, one of the most infamous characters in the Bible. It’s interesting, because the Bible never tells whether or not he repented for his mistakes and came back to serve God–though his lineage implies he didn’t. Though I left his final fate ambiguous, I did show him regretting his actions and trying to do something to mitigate the damage–because that’s what the story demanded. I found it fairly humorous, however, that one person said the lack of his conversion at the end made it “un-Biblical.” Definitely curious how following the scriptures could make it unscriptural.
Cain sounds intriguing too. Talk about the antihero!
Added Cain to my Goodreads “want to read” list. 🙂
Brennan, I’m not sure following scripture could make a book unscriptural, either. Leaving Cain’s fate ambiguous seems to be the most honest way to go. When you are writing about real people, you’ll never get a 100% approval rating. Hey, you might not get that when writing about fictional characters, either!
I suspect the only people who get 100% approval ratings are dictators with very effective domestic intelligence and enforcement organizations.
I much prefer books that have a major plot line brimming with conflict running parallel to any romantic plotline. It’s what makes my own novels historicals instead of historical romances. That also means either the main protagonist has antihero characteristics at the beginning or there is an antihero/villain who is in opposition to that character. Without a good antihero, the “conflict” often seems too contrived over something that is too insignificant to make me want to finish the story. I usually force myself to finish, but that’s more a question of self-discipline than desire.
Yes, high stakes are important!
I don’t much care for the use of antiheroes for two reasons –
1- They place the reader in a moral quandary by making ‘bad’ attractive in some way. It becomes something of a guilty pleasure, and I suspect that Jesus and Paul both had a few things to say about that.
2 – They’re unrealistic in that they have to be made dramatically ‘grand’ to be effective. Real villainy is notably boring. C.S. Lewis pointed this out in ‘Perlandra’, and so did the chap who collared Adolf Eichmann; he coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil’.
To my mind, the most effective ‘antiheroes’ are good people who fall into the habit of doing bad things. In the film ‘Blood Diamond’, the character of Danny Archer (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is certainly not lovable, or even likable, but as the film moves on you see parts of his basically decent humanity, which stand up in the end.
We’re all a mixture of good and evil, and for me, that’s drama enough. Sometimes too much.
(On the subject of revenge fantasies, I’d strongly advise not going there. The reality is that there is nothing so soul-destroying as vengeance achieved.)
My favorite character is the anti-hero of the Harry Potter series, Severus Snape. Love love love, Snape. Now I don’t think I’d actually want to meet him in real life…actually…maybe I have??? But as a book character, he is gold. And who can resist Han Solo, the classic Star Wars antihero. Yes, I suppose I’m writing about an antihero right now…only she’s an antiheroine. Is that a word?
Not sure, but antiheroine works for me!
Hi Tamela. Thank you for an interesting read! I do not usually read anti-hero books, though an anti-hero that I am very familiar with is Dr. Gregory House from the television show House, M.D. Another anti-hero currently on the small screen is Dr. Martin Ellingham of Doc Martin fame. I like looking at these two men because it is interesting to try and figure out what makes them tick. Neither is a Christian, though they both have head knowledge of the Lord. It would be great to see them saved, but neither show would have made it if the men accepted Christ because they are so firmly rooted in being interpersonal train wrecks.
OK – I have thought about this question way too much over the years, mainly because of one anti-hero that I found bad, but good. I used to watch a very non-Christian show. I really felt the Lord convict me about it and I had to give it up, but it was hard. The anti-hero had me hooked.
The show was The Vampire Diaries (I warned you it was bad!) and the anti-hero was the handsome Damon Salvatore. His brother, also handsome, was supposed to be the hero. Handsome, wealthy, powerful, and the “good” guy. I often wondered why I didn’t like him.
Damon was completely selfish. He had zero guilt about his life choices and he always (predictably) chose whatever was the best option for himself, so what was the appeal? Believe me, as I struggled to leave the show in the dust, I kept wondering what was so great about the bad guy.
The thing is, his predictability made him, curiously, the stable one. His brother, the hero, always let the heroine make her own choices. He never bossed her around or did things for her own good, but he also wasn’t a good shoulder to cry on. He was unstable and he actually chose an addictive substance over his lady love more than once. He often fell of the wagon of being good. She couldn’t really depend on him, he didn’t always put her needs first, and his lack of opposition to any of her choices made him seem more apathetic than understanding.
However, his brother, the bad guy, claimed to be in love with the heroine. If she chose to throw herself into danger for the good of humanity, he would do just about anything to keep her safe, even if it was willfully immoral. If he had to continue to reject a moral compass by killing to save her, he did it without blinking. No matter what he chose, after he fell in “love” with her, he always made the choices that he thought were in her best interest. He never wavered, unlike “the good guy”.
And, of course, he had some sort of decency, as (I think) most anti-heroes do. Underneath his disregard for most things, he did have a few things he held dear enough to fight for, to sacrifice for…to save.
One of the most memorable episodes was when he tricked her into driving out of state with him. He went on a hunt for his missing brother, another person he was willing to try and save. He dragged her from place to place for the whole episode, busting heads and killing other baddies in order to find answers about his brother. In the last five minutes, she finally gets the clue that she’s just along for the ride and she asks him why he made her come along. His answer was that he thought she needed a day out. In that one moment, it all came together that he had noticed she was depressed and had dragged her along for his idea of proactive sleuthing fun because he wanted to help her.
And that was what got me. He was bizarre and often wrong and bad, but his reasons were good. The end doesn’t justify the means, but his “good” reasons and his commitment to them (and her) was hard for me to shake. I’m glad that I gave up the show. Their worldview was totally lost, but I often wonder about the pull of those two and their love. Maybe part of the attraction is passion, maybe commitment, maybe the willingness to do anything to save the person you love. I am fascinated by the “wrongness” of it, and yet, this antihero kept me on the edge of my seat, popcorn in hand, wanting to see more.
OK, as I think about this even more (way too much more, I know), it occurs to me that if Damon Salvatore had been a Christian, the woman in his life would never have trumped God. No matter how much he would want to keep his love out of danger, he would never shift his moral compass because of her.
So, maybe the draw of someone like unchristian Damon is that he will give everything for the person he loves, letting them be this power-wielding force in his life, and that he’ll abandon his own beliefs or go against anyone’s rules just to keep her safe.
Wow! Pretty much Pagan 101 because a Christian would keep Christ as the center, the moral compass, the source of his passions, his decisions, and his love.
Instead of being someone who would kill for love, a Christian Damon Salvatore would be someone who would sacrifice his own life for his love (i.e. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church), and he would put his love and obedience to God above his own desires and those of his beloved.
So maybe the attraction to a character like Pagan Damon is a purely selfish human desire for that kind of power and importance in someone’s life. And there it is – the twisted root of what I feel is at the heart of so many secular romances – a twisted sense of power and love that comes from a flawed and human place.
It’s the slippery slope for everyone who looks at that love story with longing, rather than realizing it has it’s priorities mixed up and that it is destined to end in disaster. Whatever that place is inside of me that is swayed by this type of romance, I think it is a place that needs digging up, rooting out, and replanting. I have a feeling that the romance novels of my youth planted those seeds in me, and they really need weeding out. Thanks for the topic! It’s given me a lot of things to consider as I write my own heroes, anti and otherwise.
I ‘m so glad I came back today and saw your analysis. I think it’s spot on.
One key conflict in my all novels is the battle between following your heart to be with the person you love, no matter what it takes, or choosing to do what you know God wants when that might cost you everything you long for. So often in books and movies the price for the “happy ending” of the love story is the lover’s soul.
A good assessment! When I see a show that talks about religion, and is off on theology, I figure that the show might encourage people to open a Bible and see for themselves. My hope about these twisted love stories is that people can see through them and choose a mate more wisely in real life as a result.
*cough* the notebook *cough*
. . .Did someone say something?