Can a morally ambiguous hero still be a hero?

The albino warlock Geralt of Rivia is a monster hunter who makes a living ridding society of the terrifying creatures that threaten it. In exchange, he receives a bag of gold and the widespread contempt of humans, who fear and marginalize him in equal measure.

This terror stems not only from his deadly combat skills, but from his reputation as a murderer and butcher, earned after an altercation in the town of Blaviken. There he had to decide between ignoring the acts that could occur or committing what he considered a “lesser evil”: murdering Princess Renfri’s bodyguards in the middle of the market. The locals hated him for it.

So, can a hero commit a reprehensible action without leaving his heroism behind?

The hero as archetype

To answer these questions, the first step is to solve an initial question: what is the hero?

The hero is a model-character, a structure that we all intuit, although we may not be able to define. For this, among other tasks, we resort to narratology, the science of the story where we use the term archetypecoming from psychology and inspired by CG Jung’s collective unconscious.

With the archetype we refer to an initial scheme known by a society and that serves to describe an idea. In this case, the idea that wants to be defined is a concrete character, its behavior and its definition. In addition to the hero, Jung’s archetypes include, among others, the “sage”, the “lover”, the “jester” or the “explorer”.

But where do that behavior and that definition come from? Its origin is myth, the classic story dedicated to narrating the lives of the ancient heroes and gods of Greece, Rome and other ancient societies. We could say that the archetype is a “recipe” whose ingredients arise from the stories that humans have always told each other.

However, what happens when societies change and therefore their histories also change? By declaring the death of God in the 19th century, Nietzsche broke the divine link between the hero and the divinity. The traditional hero –symbol of bravery, infallibility and perfection– was relegated to myth and legend, while in romance –seed of current literature– the human hero remained.

This human hero was strengthened in the literature of Romanticism, marked by the exaltation of emotions and its focus on the individual. In this breeding ground the twilight hero is born.

The twilight hero as an archetype

Understanding the archetype of the hero in epic fantasy (a literary genre where, in addition to Geralt of Rivia, heroes like Frodo Baggins, Daenerys Targaryen or Kvothe live) requires attending to their main mission: to save the world.

To do this, the hero – who in the tradition is usually masculine – evolves from what, in 1949, Joseph Campbell called monomyth: a process of overcoming obstacles in which the hero advances towards his final goal. In this path, the hero acts according to the morality of Good and against Evil. Examples of this are classic works such as The Lord of the rings (J. R. R. Tolkien, 1954).

In his definition of the myth of the hero, the Frenchman Philippe Sellier divided the heroic traits according to whether their characteristics leaned towards daylight (Good) or the darkness of night (Evil). But, after the changes suffered during the last centuries, does that Manichaeism still exist in the hero?

Between night and day, as its name suggests, the twilight hero lives. In this case, the hero is no longer expected to be exclusively a male character, nor is he expected to have a specific physical aspect.

In addition, its physical and psychological description is built with day or night elements. These are not opposed to each other, as was the case in Sellier’s theory or in the rest of the heroic tradition, but instead give shape to a unique archetype full of edges. Because a character who carries out his revenge (who is vengeful) can produce good or evil depending on the point of view of whoever judges that act. Thus, what for the character is a benign act may be, in the eyes of others, the greatest atrocity committed.

Does this dichotomy suppose the suppression of heroism? In reality, through this progression we can consider heroism as a set of traits and decisions, whether of Good or Evil. The hero stops following a straight path to converge on a succession of crossroads that define his morality beyond his capacity. to perform feats.

The twilight hero archetype differs from the traditional hero in two characteristics. The first is the possibility of being wrong, of facing the consequences of his mistakes and realizing that his actions will not always lead to the triumph he expected. The second is empathy: on the one hand, it awakens this effect in the reader with his actions and, on the other, this faculty gives him the ability to understand and make the feelings of those around him, human like him, his own.

By virtue of this humanity, the twilight hero is forced to make a series of decisions, fearful that they will lead him towards the villainy of the Night, but always with an eye on the perfection of the Day that he aspires to achieve. Although it is precisely his human condition that distances him from her.

Neither perfect nor villainous

The twilight hero is shown as a character whose ability to perform feats makes him a human hero capable of making mistakes, empathizing with others and, even so, committing reprehensible actions at certain points in his fictional life. For this, he will base himself on his own morality, far from Manichean oppositions. His arguments will depend on the context, his ideas and his nature. The course of the narrative will dictate whether he has made the right decision or not.

Be that as it may, you must take responsibility for your decisions. Well, even if you aspire to perfection and fear falling into the dark, you will follow a path of your own. Neither perfect nor villain: a character between night and day. A twilight hero.

Antonio Castro Balbuena, Professor of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, University of Almeria

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.