The Gangster As Tragic Hero Analysis

Stereotyping is common to do no matter where you live in this world. People that are stereotypes are the ones that just assume things without actually knowing what they really mean. There are a lot stereotypic slurs people assume about, but the one we are going to focus on is stereotyping gangsters. In the Essay, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”, Robert Warshow talks about a lot of different things that are dealing with gangsters. Some of Robert text in his essay helps you understand what he thinks about them. He talks about how stereotypes say gangsters are considered bad people, how they are on the top of the hierarchy, and he uses Tony Montana from Scarface as an example.
People start to assume just because someone is considered a gangster

that means he is supposed to be portrayed as a bad person in this world. Robert informs the reader that the gangsters that are looked down upon are the ones that speak for us, or influence us the most. To me, anybody that say gangsters are bad, or criminals are stereotyping. In the essay Robert Warshow says, “He is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become”(pg.433). Think about it! We are the spectators of the life they live and we want to do what they do, but we don’t want to be considered a gangster because they are “bad” people. If these gangsters are such bad people then why so many people idolize them. They impact us just like a person who makes six figures a year, yet they still get put down in our world. Not saying gangsters are good, but all gangsters are not bad. It’s people in this world who grew up a gangster and seen that the life that they were living is not the life they want to live. Furthermore, they can use the experiences they were in when they were a gangster to positively impact someone else life by telling right from wrong, or just guiding them down the right path. On the other hand, these gangsters cannot just give up their lifestyle, because once you enter a gang, there is no way out of it. So, every gangster is not a bad person, some can really help change other people lives.

Robert Warshow states “The gangster is the man of the city, with the city’s language and knowledge, with its queer and dishonest skills and its terrible daring, carrying his life in his hands like a placard, like a club”(pg.433). Why would a gangster in a local city be considered, “the man of the city”, or be on the top of the hierarchy? A gangster is someone who commit crimes, sell drugs, and break laws, but still is able to be a king of a city. Talking to people about a gangster is like talking to someone about someone who is in prison, always putting them down. They always assume since they are gangsters then that means they have to be at the bottom of the successful pyramid. On the other hand when the local news come on and the watchers see someone who committed a crime, the first thought that come to the watcher’s head is, “oh, just another criminal”, but when a movie about a man who is taking over a city by committing crimes, we choose to side with the gangster.
In the Essay, Warshow uses the film Scarface as an example of a gangster (pg.434).

He didn’t go too much in detail, but I think he should have just so the reader can have a better understanding on how a gangster that is stereotype, but still manage to impact the viewers and become the “king of a city.” This gangster name Tony Montana was a cocaine trafficker from Cuba that came to the US trying to find a way to get financially stable. The movie started by showing him as a successful man, but no one knew how he was able to get that fame. That just made the watchers want to know how exactly he got to be that successful. They begin to understand that he was a cocaine trafficker, but that just made the viewer’s idolize him even more. That’s ironic because when it’s someone in a local city selling drugs, then they must be a bad person, or viewed as a wrongdoer. Come to find out, the beginning of the movie was really the ending. The scene they showed in the beginning was the same scene at the end of the movie. He had asked to be left alone and according to Robert, when left alone as a successful man in a gangster film you are about to be killed, but why? Is it just because he is a gangster? It’s not right that people think just because someone is a gangster and has money then he is destined to

die.
In conclusion, just because someone states a gangster is a bad person doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because someone is considered a gangster doesn’t mean they cannot be at the top of the hierarchy. And just because you are considered a gangster, doesn’t mean you cannot be a successful man. All of that means is that if you think those things are not possible then you are stereotyping a person just because of the life they lived or living. You cannot put the people down that you want to be like just because you don’t want to be titled as a gangster.