Antihero
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Antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero or two words anti hero)<ref name="Lexico">Template:Cite web</ref> is a literary term that can be understood as standing in opposition to the traditional hero, i.e., one with high social status, well-liked by the general populace, and given a particular role to play. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that most of the audience considers heroic, they continue because they must, not because they believe they are the right person for the job.<ref>The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - fourth edition</ref>
The "Racinian" antihero is defined by three factors. The first is that the antihero is doomed to fail before their adventure begins. The second constitutes the blame of that failure on everyone but themselves. Thirdly, they offer a critique of social morals and reality.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> To other scholars, an antihero is inherently a hero from a specific point of view, and a villain from another.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Typically, an antihero is the focal point of conflict in a story, whether as the protagonist or as the antagonistic force.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> This is due to the antihero's engagement in the conflict, typically of their own will, rather than a specific calling to serve the greater good. As such, the antihero focuses on their personal motives first and foremost, with everything else secondary.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
History
An early antihero is Homer's Thersites, since he serves to voice criticism, showcasing an anti-establishment stance.<ref name="tolstoy1">Template:Cite book</ref> The concept has also been identified in classical Greek drama,<ref name="britannica1">Template:Cite web</ref> Roman satire, and Renaissance literature<ref name="tolstoy1"/> such as Don Quixote<ref name="britannica1"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the picaresque rogue.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
An anti-hero that fits the more contemporary notion of the term is the lower-caste warrior Karna in the Mahabharata. Karna is the sixth brother of the Pandavas (symbolising good), born out of wedlock, and raised by a lower-caste charioteer. He is ridiculed by the Pandavas, but accepted as an excellent warrior by the antagonist Duryodhana, thus becoming a loyal friend to him, eventually fighting on the wrong side of the final just war. Karna serves as a critique of the then-society, the protagonists, as well as the idea of the war being worthwhile itself – even if Krishna later justifies it properly.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The term antihero was first used as early as 1714,<ref name="Merriam">Template:Cite web</ref> emerging in works such as Rameau's Nephew in the 18th century,<ref name="tolstoy1"/> and is also used more broadly to cover Byronic heroes as well, created by the English poet Lord Byron.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Literary Romanticism in the 19th century helped popularize new forms of the antihero,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> such as the Gothic double.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The antihero eventually became an established form of social criticism, a phenomenon often associated with the unnamed protagonist in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.<ref name="tolstoy1"/> The antihero emerged as a foil to the traditional hero archetype, a process that Northrop Frye called the fictional "center of gravity".<ref name="Frye">Template:Cite book</ref> This movement indicated a literary change in heroic ethos from feudal aristocrat to urban democrat, as was the shift from epic to ironic narratives.<ref name="Frye"/>
Huckleberry Finn (1884) has been called "the first antihero in the American nursery".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Charlotte Mullen of Somerville and Ross's The Real Charlotte (1894) has been described as an anti-heroine.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The antihero became prominent in early 20th-century existentialist works such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (1938),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and Albert Camus's The Stranger (1942).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The protagonist in these works is an indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by boredom, angst, and alienation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s as an alienated figure, unable to communicate.<ref name="Hart">Template:Cite book</ref> The American antihero of the 1950s and 1960s was typically more proactive than his French counterpart.<ref name="Edelstein">Template:Cite book</ref> The British version of the antihero emerged in the works of the "angry young men" of the 1950s.<ref name="britannica1"/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The collective protests of Sixties counterculture saw the solitary antihero gradually eclipsed from fictional prominence,<ref name="Edelstein"/> though not without subsequent revivals in literary and cinematic form.<ref name="Hart"/> During the Golden Age of Television from the 2000s and into early 2020s, antiheroes such as Tony Soprano, Gru, Megamind, Jack Bauer, Gregory House, Dexter Morgan, Walter White, Frank Underwood, Don Draper, Neal Caffrey, Nucky Thompson, Jax Teller, Alicia Florrick, Annalise Keating, Selina Meyer and Kendall Roy became prominent in the most popular and critically acclaimed TV shows.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Faithfull, E. (2021). How House brought the "savant anti-hero" into the mainstream and changed TV dramas. www.nine.com.au. https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/latest/house-savant-anti-hero-medical-drama-9now/0e030210-8bfe-424f-b687-f2e36e6f0694</ref><ref>Pruner, A. (n.d.). Hear us out: Gregory House was TV's last great doctor. https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/hear-us-out-gregory-house-was-tvs-last-great-doctor/</ref>
In his essay published in 2020, Postheroic Heroes – A Contemporary Image (German: Postheroische Helden – Ein Zeitbild), German sociologist Ulrich Bröckling examines the simultaneity of heroic and post-heroic role models as an opportunity to explore the place of the heroic in contemporary society.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In contemporary art, artists such as the French multimedia artist Thomas Liu Le Lann negotiate in his series of Soft Heroes, in which overburdened, modern and tired Anti Heroes seem to have given up on the world around them.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
See also
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