Cardboard Heroes?

Posted by khalling 11 years, 9 months ago to Books
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Written by DB Halling

Modern thrillers rely on stock values, heroes, and villains. The hero is a CIA, FBI, Delta force operative, attorney, doctor, or cop. The villain is easily identifiable as the terrorist, greedy businessman, or thug. The values are the simple bromides of self sacrifice, honor, duty, loyalty, flag. These are backed up by the emotional reasoning of emoticons. Walter Donway describes them as the last vestiges of romanticism in literature.


The plot in these thrillers revolves around the execution of stopping the bad guys. Values to the extent that they enter the plot at all, just provide the vague underlying motivations of the characters. This reduces the plotline to something like terrorists plans to blow up the Capital with a dirty bomb. We see the terrorists struggle to build a dirty bomb and get it into Washington. Our CIA hero begins to piece together their plot, but the bureaucracy is resistant. Just as the terrorists are about to explode the dirty bomb, our hero fights a miraculous one man shoot out and finally convinces the CIA that he is right. The cavalry rides in and saves the day at the last second.


Compare this to The Fountainhead in which the hero is an architect, of all things. The villain is an art critique for a newspaper and the book explores the values of integrity, individuality, and objective reality versus conformity, subjectivity, and social reality. The values are not mere window dressing in The Fountainhead, they drive the action. When I read The Fountainhead I thought it was a retelling of the story of Galileo and the Catholic Church (This story ended my relationship with the Church). This pits the values of tradition and compliance against the values of reason and the truth. I started it the weekend before finals in the fall of my sophomore year of college. I needed to study for my finals in engineering physics I, Calculus III, macroeconomics and others, but the book was so compelling that I dropped everything to finish it.


A couple of recent exceptions to the cardboard heroes that come to mind include Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, which explores the values of the environmental movement. The action is driven by the values of the characters: the antagonists pushing their environmental agenda against the hero who fights for real science. The movie Enemy of the State is another exception. It explores the trade between security and freedom. Most books that explore values at all fall into science fiction, fantasy, and dystopian genres, such as, Hunger Games.


In our recently released novel, Pendulum of Justice, we explore the values of reason, natural rights, and entrepreneurism versus emotionalism, government power, and crony capitalism. The actions of the characters are shaped by their values. The hero is a private citizen and founder of a couple of technology startups, while the villains are power hungery government bureaucrats and their crony capitalist friends.


What do you think?


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  • Posted by WDonway 11 years, 9 months ago
    I think that one distinction to make is between a novel about a conflict over "external" values and a novel about a conflict over values that shape and define a character's soul. Much of popular Romanticism depicts conflict over "in the world," so to speak--law and order, political change, ideas, a country's freedom. In my presentation at the Atlas Summit 2013 on the Romantic Movement in literature, I tried to make the case that literary Romanticism's defining characteristic is it's premise of free will pertaining to character, so that all action and conflict proceed from character and is not "determined" by anything external to character. That is a pretty abstract formulation; I think I did better, with more space, in my presentation. But the banner of literary Romanticism might be "man is a being of self-made soul." The great "liberation" achieved by the Romantic Rebellion was that art and its enjoyment became about the creation, expression, and celebration of the individual.

    The distinction between "external" and "internal" values may be challenging to make in some complex novels, especially since the greatest novels seamlessly integrate the striving for inner values and the striving for values out in the world. A hero in the broadest terms is the perfect embodiment of a code of values: Jesus is the perfect embodiment of Christian values, a hero of Christianity. But not all heroes are portrayed as exemplars of a code of values that they have actively chosen, internalized, and integrated with action. A hero embodying great patriot values may be portrayed as clearly the outcome of his upbringing, of a code inculcated by tradition. He is in a sense a hero of action, but not of character; he did not actively choose and fight for his character. James Bond is such a hero, raised with manly virtues, bred in war, steeped in patriotism, and a gentleman by upbringing. But "Anthem," as brief and reduced to essentials as it is, is all about the discovery and fight for the very essence of human character: the possession of ones own ego in a world where it is not possible to "just be raised that way." Based on this analysis, I continue to see many excellent popular Romantic novels, including some the break the mold of writing about cops or secret agents, but few if any signs of revival of the great literature of Romanticism. For example, most of my own novels avoid the standard cop or agent (but realize that doctors, soldiers, politicians, sea captains, explorers, and cowboys, among others, can also be in the category of Romantic action heroes). My characters are not in conflicts over the values that define their souls, although in the early introduction of a character most novelists throw in a few or more than a few items about what shaped the character. The novel of mine that most relies on a character's continuing struggle for her soul is "The Price of Hannah Blake." But it remains a fairly straightforward historical romance/thriller. Hannah Blake is not Hester Prynne, even leaving aside the gulf between myself and Nathanial Hawthorne in our ability to achieve a characterization. Hester Prynne's battle is ALWAYS for her soul, even as she fights for values in the world, such as raising and protecting her daughter. For additional food for thought, you could have a look, for free, at my presentation on Romanticism, now offered on the Atlas Society Web site.
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    • Posted by dbhalling 11 years, 9 months ago
      Hi Walter you have defined this much better than my attempt. You have clearly given it more thought than I have. Let me use an example to explain my complaint. When Tom Clancy first wrote Red October there was nothing like it and he did have Ramius, the Russia Sub commander, explore his values somewhat. Unfortunately, Clancy became so successful that he inspired a whole cadre of authors, many highly successful, that essentially just use his same basic plot outline with new situations. (Note I have enjoyed many of these) A similar situation has occurred with hero cops. As you say these stories never explore internal values and more broadly they never really explore any values (e.g., James Bond) – the values are taken for granted in the story. Most of the books and movies that do explore values today are ones that in my opinion wallow in the main character’s problems with only minimal exploration of how they relate to external values. For example, the main character is struggling with the grief of a lost child, bad parents, lost limb etc and their internal struggle of how they move forward. Bottom line: I think our novels, TV shows, and movies are in a rut.
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      • Posted by WDonway 11 years, 9 months ago
        There are some novels today that are profound, up to a point, but their premise is some form of determinism--or, a new twist--circumstances so overwhelming determined that there is no ROOM for character development. For example, I read "The Road," by Cormac McCarthy twice, and think about it often. The father-son relationship and the sheer courage of father and son--not to mention what they face!--is for me like a cobra swaying to the music. But there is no character development whatsoever. In a broad philosophical sense, even the finest naturalistic novels today fail in their characterization because they proceed without premise of free will, that man is a being of self-made soul.
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        • Posted by $ johnrobert2 11 years, 9 months ago
          I don't know if you read science fiction, but one novel which has impressed me is "Freehold" by Michael Z. Williamson. Kendra Pacelli develops from a nonentity in the UN Forces to an almost unstoppable force by sheer will and inability to consider surrender. How she undergoes this transformation makes fascinating reading about the place and honor the military has on her adopted world and the place of citizens in it. I recommend it very highly.
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    • Posted by 11 years, 9 months ago
      or how about the two police detectives in "The Lailly Worm" ? As the author, would you mind expounding on the external/internal value determinations of those characters?
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      • Posted by WDonway 11 years, 9 months ago
        The FBI agents in "The Lailly Worm" are intriguing 'flat" characters, of course. My heroine, with her PTSD sexual obsession, and her allure, manages to bewitch them, a bit, so they don't act as we believe that FBI agents should act. Compared to them, the characters in "Pendulum of Justice" are very, very original and distinct characters... I did not mention it, but, as you know, I greatly enjoyed the book.
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        • Posted by 11 years, 9 months ago
          and we thank you. I did not find the one detective flat. I think in that line of work, one can build up a protective wall which may come off flat. You didn't choose to develop that character as much but I was still intrigued.
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  • Posted by Lucky 11 years, 9 months ago
    Hallings, greetings and thanks.
    Not just in modern novels there are those who claim to speak for, to represent, to be working for some group or, they say, for the people. It is rare that I find them speaking for me. On the other hand there are moments of someone giving a private opinion and I think, yes, that is right.
    I did like State of Fear, a great message, not a great novel tho'. Atlas Shrugged has engineers as heroes, the villains are bureaucrats and in public relations, hard to go wrong with that to my mind, it didn't.
    I assume that DBH continued with engineering later, and recovered from the harm of (mainstream) macroeconomics.
    Your comments go to the heart of the matter, it is why we are here.
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    • Posted by 11 years, 9 months ago
      hey, Lucky. DB is a patent attorney. so his engineering days in the traditional sense are of the past. However, you have to be an engineer, in order to understand complex inventions so he constantly brushes up on the EE and optics stuff. maybe other stuff too. and yes, we both love the novel Atlas Shrugged. It is rare that a novel portrays engineers as creative. We made a conscious effort to do that in our novel.
      the only ones recovered from the macroeconomics. as you put it, are pulling at some govt teat. The entrepreneurs continue to languish under regulation and an uncertain patent system. VC's are mostly chasing after govt backed green energy programs, cuz they want to be one of the first holding a newly printed dollar. who can blame them? I certainly don't want to be the last. ;)
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