Anti-hero definition: types, examples and how to write one

An anti-hero is a protagonist who lacks the qualities a hero is supposed to have, such as courage, idealism, honesty or plain decency, but still carries the story. Merriam-Webster, which spells it antihero, defines the word as “a protagonist or notable figure who is conspicuously lacking in heroic qualities.” Readers follow an anti-hero, and often root for one, while disapproving of what they do. Huck Finn, Becky Sharp and Raskolnikov are classic examples; Tony Soprano and Walter White are modern ones.

To tell whether a character is an anti-hero, ask two questions. Does this person drive the story? And which of the traits readers expect from a hero, such as courage, honesty or decency, do they plainly lack? Answer both and you have the label, and usually the type: the five types below are sorted by the missing trait.

Anti-hero, villain, antagonist, Byronic hero

The cleanest first test is position. A villain usually opposes the protagonist; an anti-hero is the protagonist. An antagonist is defined by opposition alone, so it can be a man of rigid honesty like Javert, or no person at all. The guide to writing a villain covers that side of the table.

Position is a question about the story's structure, and it's separate from the moral verdict. Becky Sharp shows why. Judged on her conduct alone, she could pass for a villain: she lies, schemes, shows “the utmost indifference” to her small son, and by the last chapters the novel lets the reader suspect worse. But Vanity Fair follows her climb rather than anyone's attempt to stop her, so her place is the protagonist's. “Anti-hero” names that combination, a hero's place in the story without a hero's virtues. Whether the reader forgives her is a separate question, and the novel leaves it open.

The blurry line is the villain protagonist: Shakespeare's Richard III, or Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley. Ask what the reader hopes for. With an anti-hero, they usually want the character to win and wince at how. With a villain protagonist, they watch to see how far the character will go, and whether anyone can stop them.

Where the anti-hero comes from

The word is older than it looks: Merriam-Webster dates it to 1714. Three nineteenth-century landmarks are worth knowing. Lord Byron's poems of the 1810s, from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–18) to Manfred (1817), made a proud, guilty, brooding hero famous enough to be named after him. William Makepeace Thackeray published Vanity Fair as a book in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, and put the ruthless, funny Becky Sharp at its center. And Fyodor Dostoevsky's narrator in Notes from Underground (1864) used the word about himself.

The underground man knows he is the wrong kind of protagonist and says so near the end of his notes. That self-knowledge is a large part of the type's pull: an anti-hero often sees his own failings more clearly than the respectable people around him see theirs. The twentieth century, and later television, added the famous modern ones: Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Yossarian in Catch-22 (1961), Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper.

Five types of anti-hero

There is no fixed list, and critics and craft books sort them differently. These five working types are sorted by what the character lacks, and most anti-heroes mix two.

The unheroic everyman

Lacks courage, competence or will. The underground man opens his notes with “I am a sick man….” and spends them nursing grudges and humiliations. Modern relatives: Yossarian, who mostly wants to survive the war, and Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Readers stay because they recognize themselves on a bad day, and because the type is often funny.

The rogue

Lacks scruples, not charm. Becky Sharp lies, flirts and lives on credit as she climbs English society, and Thackeray lets her say the quiet part out loud.

The line is a joke and an indictment at once. In Vanity Fair goodness is a luxury Becky can't afford, and most of the respectable characters who can afford it don't bother. A rogue is easiest to forgive when the world around them is no better, only better dressed. Modern relatives: Han Solo, Jack Sparrow.

The outcast with a conscience

Lacks respectability. The outcast breaks the rules of a society that is itself wrong, and often believes he is the sinner. Huck Finn has been taught that helping Jim escape slavery is stealing and a sin. In chapter 31 he writes to Jim's owner, Miss Watson, to tell her where Jim is held. Then he looks at the letter.

Huck thinks he is damning himself. The reader knows he has just made the most decent choice in the book. That gap, between the conscience his society gave him and the decency he can't help, is what makes this type work. A modern relative: Lisbeth Salander.

The self-justifier

Lacks a limit, and has an argument instead. Raskolnikov decides that extraordinary people may step over the law for a higher purpose, and kills an old pawnbroker to prove he is one of them. Dostoevsky lets the theory be argued in earnest, then makes the man pay for it.

The theory fails on what the murder does to him, not on its logic. Modern self-justifiers run whole television series on the same engine, from Walter White to Tony Soprano: the audience follows the argument from inside and watches it rot.

The Byronic hero

Lacks peace. The historian Lord Macaulay summed up the heroes of Byron's poems as “a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection.” Heathcliff fits every clause. Isabella Linton, who marries him, writes to the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, in chapter 13: “Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil?” Rochester, in Jane Eyre (also 1847), is the tamer version: a secret, a temper and a capacity for love that the plot has to burn clean.

Heathcliff's revenge takes two decades and ends in emptiness. In chapter 33, with both families in his power, he calls it “a poor conclusion” and admits, “I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction.” K. M. Weiland uses him as her example of a fall: the character arc of someone who clings to the lie until it leaves them with nothing.

How to write an anti-hero

1. Give them a want the reader shares

   Huck wants Jim free. Becky wants never to be poor again. The reader backs the goal while flinching at the method. If the want itself is ugly, you are probably writing a villain protagonist.

2. Make them good at something

   Competence buys a great deal of forgiveness. Becky's nerve and wit carry her through scenes that would sink a duller schemer.

3. Draw a line, then test it

   Decide the one thing the character won't do, show it early, then build the scene that pushes them toward it. Whether they cross it is the climax of the arc.

4. Put someone worse in the room

   Huck's father, Pap, is a drunk who beats him and locks him in a cabin. Beside Pap, a boy who lies and steals looks like what he is: a child trying to survive. A foil sets the moral scale.

5. Let the reader inside

   Huck and the underground man narrate their own cases. First person or close third (see POV) makes the reader an accomplice: they hear the reasons before they see the act.

6. Send the bill

   Raskolnikov confesses and is sent to Siberia. Heathcliff gets everything and can't enjoy it. Even Becky, who ends the novel in Bath and Cheltenham, busy in “works of piety,” has lost her husband and her son on the way, and Thackeray's irony does the rest. An anti-hero who never pays, in a story that never sees it, reads as wish fulfillment. Decide early whether the story ends in redemption, a fall, or a character who stays exactly who they are.

Vic takes a family's car, which is his job and not a kind one. In the same ten lines he shows he is good at it, keeps a code (the car seat, the warning about the fees) and refuses credit for it. The reader learns the line he won't cross before the plot asks him to cross it.

Mistakes that sink an anti-hero

Rudeness is not depth, and a list of bad habits is not a character. Pick one or two serious flaws for the plot to push on. The negative character traits list starts with the traits that hurt other people, and who gets hurt is the question an anti-hero raises in every scene.

The code is also the part that drifts in a long draft: the line he won't cross in chapter 4 gets crossed without comment in chapter 22. Keep the want, the code and the bill (what they pay, and when) on one sheet. The character profile template has room for all three.

With that sheet attached, the Strokes Assistant can review a chapter against it and point to the places where the character crosses the line at no cost.