In my corner of the indie fiction community, there is strong pushback against the subversive, the deconstructive, and the amoral – and rightly so. There have been so many deconstructions, subversions, and gritty reboots of decidedly ungritty properties that one is left wondering if anything can be played straight anymore.
But I have a confession to make: I *like* gritty content. Not to the exclusion of everything else, mind you – I’m a huge fan of The Princess Bride, Jimmy Stewart, and old Disney movies. But I like when fiction delves into the darker aspects of human nature. I like when a story calls attention to real world details oft-forgotten in more swashbuckling heroic fiction. I like when the protagonist must struggle to remain (or become) a hero in a fallen world, where bad things happen to good people, where sometimes the victim cannot be saved.
I like antiheroes. Protagonists who are underhanded, who lie, cheat, steal, who cross boundaries of morality but retain qualities that make us root for them anyway. I like characters who may be no one’s idea of paragons of virtue, but sure as hell are better than the other guys. I am referring to characters like Dirty Harry, Private Kelly from Kelly’s heroes, the Man with No Name, and most of Clint Eastwood’s iconic roles.
Even Han Solo has a lot of anti-hero in him. George Lucas’ infamous revision to make Greedo shoot first was a clear attempt to soften his edges and deprive him of that status. But you have to ask yourself one question: do you really want the Han who waits to be shot at to be the one to come to your rescue?
In my own novella The Loki Exodus, the protagonist is an antihero. She fights against tyranny, but her motives are purely mercenary. And other characters, both noble and ignoble, point it out. The world is grim, dark, and gritty, but morality still exists and must be acknowledged.
Here is what I don’t like: Nihilism. Hopelessness. Despair. I will illustrate the difference with two novels by the same author, one I adore, and the other that I could not finish. The two novels are Blood Meridian and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
I cannot give a full account of the whole of Blood Meridian, because I could not bring myself finish it. Considered to be McCarthy’s magnus opus, Blood Meridian follows a group of scalp-hunters on the U.S.-Mexico border in the late 1800’s, and is based on the actual historical group led by John Joel Glanton. McCarthy takes license from these monsters and atrocities from history to portray the characters in the novel, who have no redeeming qualities that I could find.
This is not the story of a tragic fall from grace, but a descent from a mercenary indifference to life to active sadism and bloodlust. Cormac McCarthy is a talented writer. His descriptions are poetic. The landscapes of the Old West are appropriately vast and epic in nature. His words let you feel the sun on your face and smell the dust of the breeze in the air. The scenery is vibrant and full of life, the characters soulless, inhuman monsters. I suspect the contrast of the beauty of nature with the wickedness of humanity may have been the point McCarthy had in mind. If so, mission accomplished. But it is not something I have any desire to read.
Contrast Blood Meridian with McCarthy’s later novel, The Road. The Road is a brutal tale of survival in a post-apocalyptic America focusing on the trials and travails of a father and his young son. This novel is not for the faint of heart. It portrays a fallen world of starvation, cannibalism, suicide, and vile atrocities throughout, but the entirety of the story is the father and son fighting against that world. The father continually reassures the son that they are “the good guys” carrying “the fire,” i.e., civilization. And while the father falls short of that role at some points, his son acts as his conscience, holding him accountable for his missteps, and keeping him from falling into the abyss of the post-apocalyptic wasteland. All the horror and bleakness of the world act to elevate the heroism and sacrifice of a father protecting his son from the world. I was not yet a father when I read the novel, but it had a profound impact on how I think about fatherhood, and especially raising sons.
Far from espousing nihilism, harrowing tales of a dark and grim world can inspire us to persevere and to find the heroism even in fallen men with dark pasts. Those are the kind of stories I want to read. But if you’re trying to sell despair, go elsewhere.
The heroism of the hero is measured by the enormity of what he fights. That means that large evils are needed for great heroes.
Grit defies Evil... Despair lets it win.