Why do readers so love anti-heroes?
Sascha Rothchild’s recent article (May 01, 2022) 10 Most Captivating Literary Antiheroes is well worth a read.
It attempts, and succeeds, in answering the question of why we, as readers of fiction, are often drawn to the bad guys – or bad gals for that matter, in the novels we read. She refers to Tolstoy’s observation that because “good guys are always good in the same way, [while] bad guys are bad limitlessly”, it makes the bad guys more interesting as characters; enter the anti-hero!
Sascha Rothchild goes on to list her pick of ten anti-heroes which include Rodion Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky’s great and famous Crime and Punishment, the eponymous Emma of Jane Austin, and Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs. As we post as an Editorial Team, rather than individually, you might well imagine what a dispute we had in agreeing and disagreeing with this list of ten.
Who are your favourite anti-heroes?
To read the full article go to the link below: