Character & Image
Hero (Literary)
A hero (literary) is the central personage of a work, an acting figure endowed with significance in the development of the plot and the expression of the author's conception. In a broad sense, 'hero' is a synonym for the main personage regardless of moral qualities; in a narrower, evaluative sense, it is the bearer of a positive principle, a model of courage, nobility, and self-sacrifice (a heroic character). Historically, the type of the hero changed: the epic bohatyr and tragic hero of antiquity, the medieval knight, the 'natural man' of the Enlightenment, the Romantic rebel, the 'superfluous man' and 'little person' of realism, the reflecting intellectual and the antihero of modernism. The type of the hero reflects the ideals of an era. Heroic characters of Ukrainian literature are Zakhar Berkut of Ivan Franko and the nameless captive fighter in the poetry of Taras Shevchenko; the tragic 'lost strength' is embodied by Chipka of Panas Myrny.
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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.
