First... stop to try a nice office yoga workout with yogatoday.com with your kid in tow. Then...What is a hero?
Michelle from The Innocent Flower had an excellent post earlier this week about heroes. The controversy seems to be raging, is a hero simply the Main Character, or does there have to be some moral reason why this person is the Good Guy?
For today's workout choose two characters from any work of fiction and explain why one is a hero, and the other isn't. Make sure neither character is the listed villain. If you use your own characters they don't have to be from the same book.
My novel, The Breakaway is a good example for this, I think.
ReplyDeleteNaomi is the "hero" of the story. Technically, she can be called the hero because she is the main character who drives the story along. She is the main protagonist, which is one definition of the word, HERO.
However, Naomi doesn't save the day. She saves her own day in the long run, but as for her life and her immediate future, she does not save the day. Jesse does that. And he's a bad guy.
Well, he was.
Jesse changes in the book. Naomi changes, too, but Jesse is the one that saves her day. He is a rogue hero, but ends up saving the day for everybody except the villains. Their day is ruined, but that's how it's supposed to pan out... usually. :)
In the end, Jesse kinda loses. Sad, but necessary. And no, he doesn't die. :)
This is a great post! Thanks, Liana. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear you aren't killing characters!
ReplyDeleteFor mine I was thinking of Kit Marlowe and Daea Angel. Different books, but Kit is a hero to me because she's self-sacrificing. She's willing to go out of her comfort range to protect people, and risk getting killed by not retaliating when fighting back would hurt someone.
Daea is a me-first type of person. Not the Bad Guy, but a real sociopath, she doesn't give murder a second thought. To her everyone is a dollar sign. She uses people, or removes them with very few exceptions. I don't think the reader will hate her though. We shall see.
I think the classic example of antihero or the villain disguised as the protagonist is Richard III.
ReplyDeleteHumbert Humbert? Protagonist of Lolita, actually a dead wife cover up pedophile. The book is still a masterpiece because of the evil flaws of the main character.
But as far as a character that thinks they are doing good things but doing them in a way that creates great evil...Lady MacBeth and by extension Lord MacBeth.
I'll use Twilight as an example because it's fresh on my mind.
ReplyDeleteWe are always in Bella's head, but she is not the hero(ine). She never saves anyone, and she isn't the most moral person around...
Instead, I'd say Edward is the hero because he resists powerful temptations and saves lives.