Antihero Research Paper

An antihero is something that a lot of people tend to think about it in a fairly one dimensional facet. They imagine an antihero as a clear-cut contrast to the main hero, but that’s just not what an antihero is. An antihero is a literary device that can be used in many different ways. Some antiheroes are just clear cut contrasts, but most are not. There are some antiheroes, mostly seen in modern movies and TV, that are the actual hero, but they are fundamentally flawed. There are other antiheroes that are not the main character, but they do share many qualities. Dictionary.com defines an antihero as “a protagonist who lacks the attributes that make a heroic figure.” The antihero as an idea has become more and more popular, especially since the 1960’s

There are other book series that have risen in popularity that will not be examined in this paper, series like the Twilight series with Edward Cullen, and the Artemis Fowl series with the title character. These are just a small number of the series that have come out with a very prominent showing of antiheroes in modern literature. The antihero has become so popular, in fact, that it also has certain classifications, 5 different types of antiheroes. These 5 types of antiheroes are the classical antihero, the “Disney” antihero, the pragmatic antihero, the unscrupulous antihero, and the nominal antihero. (TVTropes, Analysis/Anti-Hero) The classical antihero is the traditional idea of what an antihero is, the man who is everything that the main hero is not. Where the hero is courageous, the classical hero is cowardly; where the hero is smart, the antihero is less so, and so on. The “Disney” antihero is more of a sarcastic and unconfident version of the traditional hero. They “Disney” antihero is fundamentally good but they tend to be far more realistic and grounded than the normal hero.