Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > On 25/07/2012 06:41 AM, Warp wrote:
> > > Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
> > >> And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously.
> > >
> > > It's the typical anti-hero trope.

> > Sure. But you can't just take somebody with no redeeming qualities and 
> > say "he's the hero". That wouldn't work as a story. And yet, there are 
> > several stories where it clearly /does/ work. And I can't figure out how 
> > they do that.

> See my answer above.

Ok, I'll be a bit nicer and try a slightly more profound analysis of the
character archetype.

Jack Sparrow is an anti-heroical subversion of the classical swashbuckler
archetype.

In nostalgic/romantic storytelling, a swashbuckler has been traditionally
a goody-goody merry adventurer, most often from the romantic period of
16th-17th century European baroque and the golden era of piracy (the three
musqueteers being the quintessential example), although it can go much
farther in the past (Robin Hood being another excellent example, whose
stories are often dated to something like the 13th or 14th century)

The goody-goody hero character is a bit boring nowadays, and often tends to
be a rather flat and two-dimensional character. The so-called anti-hero is a
much more popular character type nowadays. The swashbuckler anti-hero is
quite similar to his more traditional counterpart in that he is a merry
adventurer who gets into wacky and flashy adventures, but unlike the
traditional swashbuckler, he has no qualms in lying, stealing and
committing other crimes if it serves his purposes (usually those of purely
personal gain). He might end up fighting the villains, but not because of
a sense of doing the right thing, but for personal reasons.

Unlike the typical swashbuckler, this is a *flawed* character. He commits
crimes, he is selfish and does things for personal gain, not to help others
(unless he is emotionally invested, eg. from a romantic perspective), yet
he usually ends up being the unwitting hero of the story who defeats the
actual villains.

There's much more depth to this character, and the writers have a much richer
variety of hijinks at their disposal for this character because he is not
limited to the boundaries of what's good, ethical and lawful.

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