Gone with the Anti-Hero

First. Blog. Ever. Or attempt at one I should say. I'm finally typing this just hours before it's due. Crazy isn't it? What's really crazy is the fact that I have bits and pieces of my thoughts for this blog all over the place. Some here, a little there."Organized chaos" as I like to call it. But enough with all the rambling. The main purpose of this blog is to compare anti heroes, so let's begin shall we?

An anti-hero, by definition, is a central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes. We hate them. We love them. Sometimes, we don't know exactly how to feel about them. Despite their sometimes arrogant defects, it's safe to say we hate to love them.

 

The classic anti-hero can be seen in the earliest works of American Literature. From Ichabod Crane in the 1820's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, to 1939's Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. We find many similarities between our protagonists. Each of them, though dealing with different situations and different lifestyles, are very intelligent in nature. Ichabod is the schoolmaster in Sleepy Hollow, and is responsible for passing on education to the youth in the community. Scarlett is just as intelligent, but not in a schoolmaster type of way. She's more business savvy. When her father's plantation is left decimated after the war, she works to recover it and runs a successful saw mill.

Ichabod and Scarlett are also similar in that they both act without regards to other people. They simply just DON'T CARE. You want to marry a girl for what she has and not who she is? Sure go ahead! No one's going to get hurt in the process, right? Or even better, you're determined to make a "love" interest jealous so you steal your sister's would be husband and take him as your own? Who cares! She didn't really NEED him anyway. That's right, these are real life events that these two protagonists have gone through. Do they have any remorse for the things they've done? Of course not because who cares, remember?

The last not so admirable characteristic these two lovely's share is that they both make decisions based solely on their own wants and needs. Remember the girl Ichabod wanted to marry because of her wealth? Yeah, he doesn't care much about her father's farmland. A.K.A his actual wealth. His main objective is to win her over to gain her wealth, and abandon the farm so he can live in the lap of luxury. Oh and we mustn't forget sweet, lovable Scarlett. She marries, kills, deceives, and home wrecks any and everybody in order to fulfill her personal agenda. Very commendable people huh?

Pictures cited: 

Love Hate; http://najacmovies.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-don-luv-u.html

Ichabod Crane; http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Ichabod_Crane/Gallery

Scarlett O'Hara; http://fyeahscarlettohara.tumblr.com/

Who cares; http://juniorhighministry.org/junior-high-ministry-who-cares/