Key Issue 6: Heroes and Villians (Momo, Mohammed, Keren, Raiya)

septembre 23, 2022

Heroes And Villains In Gothic Literature

How Are Heroes and Villains generally represented in Gothic literature:

PERSPECTIVE

Heroes and Villains in Gothic writing are generally represented similarly without having too many differences compared to other literature genres.

On the contrary of what people may think, Heroes and Villains in gothic literature aren’t all about depression, sadness and hatred between the Heroes & Villains, we can also see love install itself in some gothic works.

Within gothic literature heroes often start as outcasts, people with flaws whose main goal is to try to comprehend and integrate society whilst having lived most of their lives isolated from society.

This concept of heroes in gothic literature is very contrary to the classical heroes found in other writings/works who are usually shown as perfect characters with few imperfections who tend to want to defeat the “bad guys”.

On the other hand, villains in gothic literature are generally represented as immensely powerful in a supernatural, social, economic, political, scientific and physical sense, that they inspire the most powerful feelings of terror, horror and awe in them.

Commonly portrayed as innocent beings, giving depth to their character and making them appear as more complicated people with more inner conflicts, differing very much to the commonly established villain who only opposes the hero/shows evil or harmful personality traits.

Both these main antagonists/villains and heroes/protagonists are consistently illustrated as “morally gray” characters, meaning we can not easily associate them to either being purely “evil” or purely “good”.

For example in The Picture of Dorian Gray the characters are all morally gray and there are not good or bad people but more like people that are doing good or bad things. 🎩

Heroes 🦸:

Gothic heroes are often outcasts, people with flaws whose goal it is to understand and rejoin society ; they’re often lonely or isolated
Meanwhile non-gothic heroes are often represented as perfect characters with no flaws who have as their goal to do good and defeat the bad

Villains 🧛:

Gothic villains are usually so immensely powerful in a supernatural, economic, social, political, scientific, or physical sense that he/she inspires the most powerful feelings of terror and awe in them.
Sometimes portrayed as innocent which gives depth to their character and makes them appear as more complicated people with more inner conflicts
While normal villains only oppose the hero, and show evil or harmful personality traits.