Character & Image
Antihero
The antihero is a central personage of a work who is deprived of traditional heroic traits (nobility, courage, moral integrity) or endowed with markedly negative, contradictory qualities, yet who occupies the place of the main character. The antihero does not evoke unambiguous admiration: they may be weak, passive, amoral, a 'little person,' or a nihilist rebel. The concept became distinct in the 19th–20th centuries as a reaction against the idealized Romantic hero. Classic examples are Dostoevsky's 'man from underground' and the personages of existentialist and absurdist prose (Camus's Meursault). The antihero makes it possible to explore the 'dark' sides of human nature, social deformations, and the crisis of values. In Ukrainian literature, the traits of an antihero belong to Chipka of Panas Myrny's 'Do the Oxen Low When the Manger Is Full?' — a 'lost strength' broken by injustice.
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Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two opposite conceptions of the central character. The hero (in the evaluative sense) is a bearer of a positive principle, a model of courage, nobility and self-sacrifice, capable of deed and choice. The antihero occupies the PLACE of the main character but is DEPRIVED of heroic virtues: weak, passive, amoral or contradictory (the "underground man," the "little person," a nihilist). The antihero evokes no unambiguous admiration and explores the "dark" sides of the human and the crisis of values.
