Kvothe Anti Hero Analysis

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Recommended: What defines a hero

Shairwin Mendoza
Violet McKeon
Writing 39B
20 April 2014

On Kvothe: The Anti-Hero
There are heroes in every story: fairy tales, fables, epics, film, video games, etc. and they all have shared many characteristics together, which set the standards of what a traditional hero is supposed to be: courageous, selfless, strong, triumphs over evil, and saves the damsel in distress. “The definition of hero depends on the society in which these characters originate” . Most high fantasy stories take place in medieval times which during those times, “knights ideally embodied the role of the traditional hero… so the traditional hero of these fantasies set in a medieval society became the knight”1. However, in modern authors choose to deviate from the typical hero design in fantasy and center it on an unlikely hero, like Frodo in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, who possesses the opposite attributes of a hero. The Name of the Wind challenges the fantasy genre through its deviation from many typical fantasy elements and Rothfuss does this well through the protagonist, Kvothe. Kvothe has many characteristics of a hero, but deviates from the typical hero design through his mysteriousness, rogue-like actions, cowardice, and selfishness to survive.
In the prologue, Rothfuss decides to introduce the hero of our book as the innkeeper, without naming him, so there is no hero yet revealed. We learn a few things about the innkeeper in this chapter; the descriptions of him were interesting and made him stand out in a subtle way. The man has “true-red hair, red as flame” . Held the “greatest silence of the three” and he is, “a man waiting to die”3. Which are all unnatural and mysterious descriptions of a hero, based on what a hero is supposed to...

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...ung boy was getting mugged, he hesitated and thought about the consequences about what would come if he did help. He thought he was safe there and if he did hit one of them they would invade his home. So he decided to not compromise his safety and “set down the tile… and curled…into the shelter” He has cowardly and selfish characteristics which is what makes him an anti-hero because he is lacking the physical and mental characteristics a traditional hero would hold.
Although our hero in The Name of the Wind is lacking qualities, he is still an unscrupulous hero with many names, defined by his dark experiences of his troupe’s death. It is claimed that Kvothe has “stolen princesses… burned down the town of Trebon… expelled from the university at a younger age than most people are allowed in” which make this character even more likeable to the modern fantasy reader.

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