Gatsby Anti Hero Characteristics

Superior Essays
The question of what makes American literature American can be simply answered as any piece of writing that was written by someone who is American. While that is just one part, American literature has to reflect American culture as well as what America has been through. To answer this question, there must be a common idea that recurs in many books written by American authors.One of these common ideas that have shown up in many books is the character style of being an anti-hero. An anti-hero is a character that possesses “heroic” characteristics, but at the same time possesses characteristics that most heroes wouldn’t have. They have the goals or desires that a hero has, but the way they go about achieving them may be in an unheroic way. Just a few books that contain this character style include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Things They Carried, Catch 22, and The Great Gatsby. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character is Huck Finn. He is a young white boy who eventually goes on an adventure down the Mississippi River alongside a negro he is attempting to bring to freedom. This seems like a heroic deed, but in reality Huck Finn 's main ambition was not this. His goal was to get away from his abusive father. Huck Finn created a relationship with this negro, Jim, that showed the reader that maybe his goals had changed. “Huck knows that the journey will have been a failure unless it takes Jim to freedom. It is true that we do discover, in the end, that Jim is free, but we also find out that the journey was not the means by which he finally reached freedom” (LM 353). The end was one of the most controversial parts about this story. When Jim is caught he is put back into slavery by Tom Sawyer 's uncle. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer decide to rescue Jim. While that seems again heroic, they did it in an unnecessary way. They risked Jim’s life for an adventure. Huck had rescuing Jim in mind as his primary goal, but agreed to make it into something more difficult than it needed to be. Like the quote stated above said, the journey that Jim and Huck Finn had taken was not how Jim gained freedom. Jim had to put up with Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer’s ridiculous plan. It is now noticeable that Huck Finn does have the characteristic of being an anti-hero. He possesses the goal to help a slave to freedom, but how he went about it wasn’t in the best interest of Jim. This anti-hero theme in the story relates to all American literature because it shows the struggle that people went through. In this case it was the scary idea of bringing a slave to safety, but doing it for yourself rather than for the slave. Huck Finn does have the bravery to commit to this which is a heroic trait, but also has the unfortunate truth that he is mainly doing it for the entertainment of having an adventure. This character style fits into the idea of what makes American literature American because it reflected how many people lived and acted during the time the book takes place. This was …show more content…
Gatsby goes against the traditional ideals of being a moral hero, and achieving the American Dream through honest means. Gatsby is not a romanticized character, he is flawed like the average person. He is willing to do anything to be with Daisy, who is representative of the wealth and life Gatsby wants to have. The character trait of the anti-hero appears in many novels throughout american literature because it goes against a typical social normality, which makes it more relatable.
The character trait of the anti-hero also appears in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Catch-22 is a novel about men fighting during World War II. Yossarian, the main character and narrator, is the anti-hero of this novel. Yossarian is an anti-hero because he flees to Sweden for the sake of his life. This action, and his fear of death that is evident throughout the novel. He is not portrayed as the brave soldier who is willing to fight, but rather a man who only truly cares about his well being rather than fighting for

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