What is a hero, and what is a villain?

[Mythopoet]

Mythopoet,

Excuse my confusion. You wrote both this:



And this:



The statement of yours that I quoted was much less nuanced than the description you display here. I was simply pointing out that it isn't that simple.

My "it really is that simple" statement was about the definition of what a hero and villain are. It had nothing to do with how complex it is to judge the morality of acts. Of course, in fiction it is far simpler to judge the morality of acts than it is in real life (there are far fewer factors involved in any action in fiction than in real life). I'm not actually sure which we're talking about anymore.

However, there are situations that do not fit in your parameters, especially when considering characters & story, which we are.

I disagree. I believe the parameters I described (and keep in mind it was only a brief summary, not a comprehensive explanation of said parameters) would cover any situation that can be presented. And I would maintain, as I said above, that judging the morality of the acts of characters in fiction is far easier than judging the same in real life. In fact, it is almost impossible to do so in real life unless you can be sure that you have intimate knowledge of all the factors involved. (That's why Christians believe in not judging others.) Whereas in fiction you can be reasonably certain to have all the information bearing on the act in front of you.

I don't have time to address any other posts right now. Maybe later.

 

[Jabrosky]

I would describe my personal morality as generally "live and let live", which is to say I believe people should enjoy the freedom to do whatever they want as long as they don't hurt others or impinge on their freedom. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who either don't care about hurting others or actually go out of their way to do so. Such people register as villains in my book.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

It seems to me, T. Allen, that you are talking about a distinction which doesn't actually exist. What's at issue in this present phase of discussion is, I think, the idea of absolute good and evil versus a more muddy approach. The question is not whether the characters measure up to the standard, but whether or not the standard exists. Your characters don't need to be saints and demons for your story to have black and white morality. All that's needed is for there to be a moral standard that the characters are either trying to live up to or ignoring.

No. The thread is "What is hero? What is a villain?"

My comments have been directed solely at characters because that is the subject at hand as described by that title.

I'm not sure I can state it any more clearly than I have. I'm not trying to argue morality or the existence & implications of good versus evil. That's a philosophy debate that I don't care to delve into. I see little point.

What I have discussed is my preference for characters and how I like grey morality in my heroes and villains. I think it adds a level of depth to stories that cannot be reached with more clear depictions of right & wrong.

I'm not trying to measure characters to some arbitrary standard. I think characters are far more real otherwise, not constantly checked against artificial standards imposed by an author, but rather behaving as they would naturally (unless of course it's within the characters nature to hold themselves to a standard).

You can still examine corruption, rationalization, excuses, and the imperceptible slide into darkness without having "grey morality".

Well of course you can. Have I stated that a writer can't examine those aspects without grey morality? I just don't find that approach as interesting.

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis examines precisely those questions, and the book is black and white as it gets. In fact, I'd say black and white is more suited to dramatic moral dilemmas, because it implies that there actually is a right answer to the question at hand! There is a solution! It's just hard to find.

It's that exact thing that makes these types of stories less intriguing to me, and why I said the black & white dilemmas are easier to resolve. The simple fact there is a right & wrong, that there is a solution, that there is a right answer...well, that just bores me as a reader. I find that framework lacking in realism (or at least plausibility) and depth.

That seems, to me, to have more tension then a situation where anything goes.

I don't see how one inherently has more tension than the other. The uncertainty of the grey seems to offer more possibility of the unknown, which to me, seems to offer more tension. But, I wouldn't want to offer a blanket statement like that. It really just depends on the story. Tension isn't created only by good vs. evil.

Likewise, a fall from grace is only interesting if there is grace to fall from... and evil to fall to.

You can fall from grace in many ways. You don't have to be good to fall from grace. That assumption only holds true where a character has to align to either the good, or the bad. Seems rather limiting in scope.

 

[Nagash]

I saved your post for last Nagash, since it was the longest and I thought it would be the most time and effort-consuming to respond to. I assumed that because your post was lengthy, it would be more difficult for me to dissect. I was wrong. The ways in which we differ could not be more blindingly obvious. They are, if you'll pardon my saying so, as different as night and day, black and white. In fact, our viewpoints are so antithetical that I find it difficult to engage in discussion with you in any really meaningful way because- and I say this without any personal animosity towards you- I completely and utterly despise your opinion. I have argued with many people in my life and disagreed with many more, but never have I felt such utter revulsion and distaste for an opinion as I have for yours.

To state my opinion succinctly, I do not believe that morality is "a trick" or "an illusion". I believe it is both real and absolute and that any culture at any point is either closer to or further from that standard at any given time, though they may excel or fail in different ways. For example: Aztec human sacrifices were immoral and barbaric, but no less immoral and barbaric than Europe's long and storied history of religious persecution. The existence of an absolute moral standard does not imply that one culture's morality is necessarily better than another's, but rather that they are all in various states of corruption and all equally under judgment. What one man says is good or evil versus what another man says is of no consequence. It is the absolute standard, greater than the word of any and all human beings that matters. In short, we differ on this point: is there anything greater than man? I believe there is. You, it seems, believe there is not.

I get your point, and as I said repeatedly, I respect it. However, it seems I was unclear on one point... I, like any other human being walking this earth, have principles, beliefs, ideas about what is wrong, what is right, what is good and what is evil, what should be done and what shouldn't, what is true greatness and what isn't.

I believe that humans are mediocre - to correct the impression you had on my thoughts about men - but that they have a real capacity for greatness. And by greatness, i mean greatness through the sacrifice of oneself for the triumph of ideas. I was raised in a world where many taught me that ideas are greater than anything, and that we humans, should hold tight to them. I was raised in a world where you got results and the things you desired only if you dared fight and stand for them; and I have worshiped these human figures of History, who fought for ideas I respect, to death. And - and that will surprise you, i guess - i believe true greatness - along with true horror - can be found in faith. Faith in an idea, a god, principles, honor code, what have you... Faith, is what makes human so much more than what they are.

I believe heroism is sacrifice, self-dedication, bleeding to death for your ideas and fighting till every single bone of your body is broken. I believe aztec sacrifices were barbaric, and that the crusades, the inquisition were times of insanity.

That is what i think, what i sincerely believe in. It determines what I think is moral and what is amoral, what is good and what is evil. I have an idea of what is darkness and what is light. That is my very own point of view.

But seeing how people seem to have different ideas of what is good, and what is wrong, seeing how so many slaughters were made in the name of an idea everyone judged pure, seeing how men argued, fought and killed each other for conceptions they had of the world, i must be humble, and understand that my morality is only worth a damn to me.

Morality exists, but only on an individual point of view. I do believe that there are morally wrong and morally good things, actions, rituals... But my point is : what is amoral for me can be moral for another. MORAL ABSOLUTISM is what i do not believe in. We all have different ideas about what should and shouldn't be done. There is no such thing as something being utterly evil and something utterly good for the simple reason that there will always be someone standing in your way, wielding different opinions and beliefs. I do not believe that some sort of supreme morality exists, for we all drew are own accordingly to our situations, our history, our society, etc...

I believe in the "Hegelian" god, he who is a projection of what is good within man. He who is a combination of compassion, of kindness, of love and innocent dreams. I believe men have the potential to be great; and i believe faith can bring them to this point. But you must understand that the point I'm making, is that morality didn't came from the sky; its an ensemble of conceptions, approach to the world that humans built themselves in order to live in society; a conception which changed throughout history, adapting to our world and the creatures we became, progressively.

I should add that I am a cynic, and rather than believing that there is nothing greater than man, I prefer saying there's nothing worst than him. And in my cold analysis of the world, hand-made morality is what made humans slightly better; it made us more scrupulous beings, able to live in rather decent societies, where one could feel protected from the dark entities sleeping deeply within our psychism. Sins, such as greed, lust, envy, wrath etc... were only qualified as such not because they are utterly wrong, but because they were destructive in a social habitat. Through time however, we assimilated the fact that those emotions are negative, learned to stay away from them, and thus became slightly less brutal, less savage...

I'm guessing you are religious, or at least believe in some deity, something I truly respect and admire, for I find people with a sincere belief, to be capable of true greatness and strength in tough times. I'm not much of a religion guy, but i sincerely believe in the power of ideas and their ability to grant us true greatness in a lightless world.

Our point of views are extremely different, since our beliefs in a moral standard, aren't the same. However, all these qualities we mentioned - courage, strength, a willing heart, modesty, - are superior ideas I believe were crafted by men to drive them towards a better path, to forge our shapeless minds into something a little less savage, while you are convinced they have some divine origins.

 

[Mindfire]

No. The thread is "What is hero? What is a villain?"

Notice that I qualified my comments with the words "present phase". I said this because I wished to address specifically what was being said at the present time, not necessarily the overall topic of the thread.

It's that exact thing that makes these types of stories less intriguing to me, and why I said the black & white dilemmas are easier to resolve. The simple fact there is a right & wrong, that there is a solution, that there is a right answer...well, that just bores me as a reader. I find that framework lacking in realism (or at least plausibility) and depth.

Here I have to disagree. I'm more interested in solutions than problems. How the Sherlock will solve the mystery as opposed to the mystery for its own sake. When a question is presented as having no answer, I feel cheated because really, what's the point? So to me, the idea that there is no answer is a slap in the face. It's essentially a declaration that trying to be a good person is a waste of time.

You can fall from grace in many ways. You don't have to be good to fall from grace. That assumption only holds true where a character has to align to either the good, or the bad. Seems rather limiting in scope.

But I think that whether a character, or a real person, consciously aligns themselves to a good or bad "side", they are still either a good or bad person. That distinction doesn't go away just because the author waves his hands and says that morality is ambiguous. In my view, morality is the one thing the author does not have license to change when constructing a fantasy because morality itself is beyond the scope of the author to alter. It is transcendent. But even were it not so, I see no evidence that a clear definition of right and wrong in any way makes a story less interesting. In fact, I'd say the opposite seems true. Much is made of the success of Game of Thrones, but what of the success of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, the Avengers, and others? These franchises all have clear, unambiguous heroes and clear, unambiguous villains. They don't seem to suffer for it in terms of popularity, revenue, or respect.

 

[Mindfire]

*snip*

Nagash, thank you for clarifying your stance on the matter. I can see some nobility in your views that was earlier obscured from me. I think I understand you better, even if we must disagree.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I'm not even sure who I agree with and disagree with at this point.

I believe that in theory, there should be such a thing as absolute good and evil. Broadly speaking, I define good as that which helps people, and bad as that which hurts people, and an omniscient being would be able to tell what helps and what hurts.

On the other hand: duh, we're not omniscient! People who intentionally do evil are pretty rare, and most of them are emotionally traumatized in some way--you could even make the argument that true evil is a form of mental illness. Most people who do awful things have some form of justification for them, and that's why most of the people in my stories have justifications for the awful things they do.

If I may make this personal: I think like a villain. To put it more precisely, I've only read a handful of authors who've given my moral code to unambiguous heroes, and I've read a great many authors who've given my moral code to their villains. Even when protagonists are written who have my moral code, they tend to be portrayed as relatively awful people. I don't feel like I, personally, am really that bad of a person, so I'm naturally going to be a bit subversive in terms of who I write as heroes and who I write as villains.

Edit@Mindfire: I'd also like to say that I don't see a contradiction between the stance "You can never be entirely certain you're doing the right thing" and the stance "You should try to do what seems like the right thing." I espouse both in my stories.

Edit 2: I should also say that I agree with the statement that you can't just wave your hands and make something magically right or wrong. That's why I tend not to say "this is right" or "this is wrong"--I'm really, really sick of books where the author portrays a character I agree with, then outright states that the character is wrong and evil.

 

[Guy]

In my novel Triad the hero and villain are quite similar. The primary difference is that the hero is willing to face her flaws while the villain is not willing to face his.

 

[Ankari]

How do you define a hero or heroine? Literally, what does that word mean to you?

Likewise, how do you define what a villain is?

Debate!

Hero: Someone willing to sacrifice for a greater purpose, or for another person.

Sacrifice can be anything that is considered a loss, or the chance of loss, of great(er) value to the hero. Wealth, suffering, time, and life are good examples.

Greater purpose can be ideals perpetuated by the community, or a community itself.

Villian: Someone who works to deny or take something from someone or a community and not in defense of a greater purpose as related to the community they identify with.

Conflict: When two people, groups, or communities want opposing outcomes, or hold two ideals in direct opposition to the other.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Hero: Someone willing to sacrifice for a greater purpose, or for another person.

Sacrifice can be anything that is considered a loss, or the chance of loss, of great(er) value to the hero. Wealth, suffering, time, and life are good examples.

Greater purpose can be ideals perpetuated by the community, or a community itself.

Villian: Someone who works to deny or take something from someone or a community and not in defense of a greater purpose as related to the community they identify with.

I partly disagree. I've read a lot of stories where the villain wants to kill one person in order to benefit many people, and the heroes want to keep that person alive because they like her. The villain definitely wants to take someone, but the heroes' goal is to not sacrifice anyone.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I think it's a matter of perspective. The Aztec practice of human sacrifice has been tossed around as a "clear" example of amoral, barbaric behavior - but by whose standards? To the Aztecs the practice was extremely moral - it was required for the continued functioning of the universe. Without human sacrifice the gods would be angry, and the sun would not win its daily battle to rise each day, plunging the world into darkness. Sacrifices were guaranteed immediate entrance into heaven.

A great example of a highly moral "villain" is Javert from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. He embodies "law" and sees himself as "just" even as he pursues and persecutes the escaped "hero" Valjean.

The point is no one wakes up and says, "I'm going to be evil today." The villain is always the hero of their own story, and sees themselves in the right. They have reasons, justifications, and sometimes they're not wrong. They're just on the wrong side of history.

 

[Mythopoet]

What I find rather startling in this thread is how many people praised "blurred lines" and "shades of grey" in morality and yet completely fail to understand one of the fundamental tenants of human morality: you cannot judge the general "goodness" or "badness" of an individual. "Good" and "evil" are not qualities that people possess. You can only judge individual actions for whether they are "right" or "wrong" and also how culpable the actor is in the circumstances. Once again, each person's actions much each be judged on an individual basis.

What many people, including people here, fail to realize is that it is modern thought that has reduced the complexity of morality. Modern people go around calling people "good" and "bad", calling people "heroes" and "villains". A real comprehensive and nuanced understanding of morality would never allow this. Personally, I dislike the terms "hero" and "villain". (I will admit that my first post in this thread was more than a little flippant.) They are laden with too much cultural baggage and are nigh on meaningless now. They are just cliches.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We, too, dislike the terms "hero" and "villain," preferring to use "protagonist," "antagonist," and "monkey-in-the-middle." The thing is, morality has always been complex - if it weren't, philosophers would have been forced to find real work centuries ago. The idea that the modern era has brought with it some sort of sliding scale of good versus evil is a fallacy. What the modern era has brought is a public acknowledgment that the winning side of the conflicts of the world isn't automatically the side of "good," the side of the "angels," leaving the defeated as "evil" to balm the conflicted consciences of the victors. It is this more open, harder honesty that lets us look at childhood games like "Cowboys and Indians" which celebrates the "winning of the West" and see the pox blankets and dead children where we once saw only valiant pioneers carving out a life among ignorant savages.

I see the word "judge" being used a fair bit here. As writers, we don't see it as our place to judge. We don't want to pontificate on some sort of moral argument, but we do want to ask hard questions - what is good, and what is evil? Our characters are people with goals and dreams, who are hurt and make mistakes out of fear or rage, and sometimes those mistakes are tragic. But we won't slap a label of "hero" or "villain" on them because the lines really are blurred - that is the nature of humanity.

Trying to draw artificial distinctions between good and evil is just that; artificial. It is a social construction to help us to sleep at night, to help us to forget that everyone, anyone, is capable of tremendous horror if their lives just took one wrong turn. And that even those who commit evil actions are still capable of loving.

 

[BWFoster78]

Mythopoet,

You stated this:

What I find rather startling in this thread is how many people praised "blurred lines" and "shades of grey" in morality and yet completely fail to understand one of the fundamental tenants of human morality: you cannot judge the general "goodness" or "badness" of an individual.

You are aware that this is a forum for fiction writers, correct? I haven't seen anyone praise "blurred lines" except in the context that it makes a story more interesting. No offense, but you sound like this:

Forum: I find "blurred lines" in a story interesting.
You: The forum is wrong.

It's kinda hard to tell someone that what they find interesting in a story isn't actually interesting in a story. People like what they like, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Again, most of the people on this thread are discussing this concept as it applies to fiction writing. As such, I absolutely can judge the "goodness" or "badness" of my character because that character is playing the "good" or "bad" role in the story I created. Even cooler, I can take my "bad" character and turn him "good," and vice versa with my "good" character. I absolutely, if I want to, can have an "evil" character. I can have my character literally be evil incarnate. I can do this because I'm writing fiction, and I can do anything I want with my world.

I do agree with you that the terms "hero" and "villain" aren't very good. I, too, prefer "protagonist" and "antagonist."

 

[Helen]

point of view

I think that's it. Point of view in relation to theme.