Anti-Heroes

Now that we have gotten further along into Ship Breaker and this unit, we can begin to explore a final lesson on literary heroes: the anti-hero. anti-heroes by definition are characters that play the protagonist in a story and sacrifices for others or fights for some greater good but also are devoid of those typical qualities that our classic heroes have. Remember those? We talked about them back in the first unit this year with Percy Jackson. A classic hero is strong, brave, talented, noble, selfless, and honorable. Think about Percy Jackson, Superman, and Captain America. These characters represent the classic hero, the ideal our culture and society strive to be.

Anti-heroes, lack some or all of these traits. Anti-heroes might save the world at the end of the story, but not because it was the right thing to do. She probably did it because she realized her life would be over too if the world ended or some other selfish reason. Anti-heroes come in many shapes and forms, but they all the darker reflection of the classic hero. They are selfish, greedy, dishonorable, sometimes unscrupulous, weak, cowardly, and sometimes even evil. Despite these failings, we love anti-heroes. Just look at popular movies, TV shows, video games, and books today. The protagonists are almost all anti-heroes. Captain Jack Sparrow, the Fast and Furious gang, Deadpool, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Frodo, Shrek, and many, many more are all anti-heroes from popular movies and books. So what appeals to us about these characters? This is what we are exploring in class this week and next.

You can view the presentation on anti-heroes given in class below and the assignment kids worked on in small groups below. We will continue from here with an exploration of our characters in Ship Breaker. Is Nailer an anti-hero? How about other characters in the book? It will be fun seeing the students' responses to these questions.