Heroes or Villains?
When I read a novel or watch a movie, I like the protagonist to be good—morally upright, virtuous, a role model. And I like the villain to be bad—flesh-crawlingly ugly, repulsive, and unlikable. Think of the difference between heroes and villains in Peter Jackson’s portrayal of Tolkien’s characters in Lord of the Rings. Gothmog, the orc-general, flaunts a deformed visage that matches his twisted character. Aragorn, by contrast, is just the kind of king you want to lead you into battle—stately, noble, courageous, yet self-effacing and deeply good.
On the other hand, I don’t like this clear-cut distinction between hero and villain. It seems untrue to real life, unlike the people we know. The people we demonize sometimes surprise us with touches of angelic warmth, even altruism. Likewise, our heroes betray vices that cast clouds over our admiration for them. In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being” (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1:168).
A Perplexing Tangle
This bizarre duality of good and evil has been described this way: “Is it not clearer than day that we feel within ourselves the indelible marks of excellence, and is it not equally true that we constantly experience the effects of our deplorable condition? What else then does this chaos and monstrous confusion proclaim but the truth about these two states in a voice too powerful to be gainsaid?” (Pascal, Pensées L208/S240).
The point is this: we humans are a perplexing tangle of greatness and wretchedness. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could separate the heroes from the villains? But we can’t. Heroism and villainy, virtue and vice, coexist—not only in a single individual at different times, but also in a single individual engaged in one endeavor.
Villainy in Heroism
I found a striking example of this feature of human nature in Max Hastings’ remarkable history of World War II, Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945. During the Germans’ bombing of London, a man named Bob Davies distinguished himself as a national hero for volunteering to undergo the life-threatening task of diffusing and extracting German bombs that had fallen in London, including one that had embedded itself 28 feet into the ground dangerously close to St. Paul’s Cathedral. But less than two years later, as Hastings writes, “Davies was court-martialed on almost thirty charges involving large-scale and systematic theft through his time in charge of his UXB squad; he also exploited his role to extract cash payments from some of those whose premises he saved from bombs, compounded by later passing dud cheques.”
Hasting’s assessment of Davies’ conflicted behavior reflects this paradox of human nature. “A lesson of his story,” Hastings concludes, “was that scoundrels as well as heroes played their parts in the blitz, and some people were a tangle of both.”
We Are Sinful Image-Bearers
Doesn’t this fit what Scripture teaches about the human condition? We were created in the image of God, which means at least that we have some capacity to reflect God’s good nature. So we can expect to humans—sometimes, at least—to act in ways that are surprisingly noble and selfless. But our having been created in God’s image is only part of the story. We have fallen into sin. We have a stubborn, inborn tendency to rebel against God, acting as if we are the center of the universe. So this mixture of virtue and vice is like a shattered vase. The smooth curves and jagged edges of the broken pieces don’t balance each other out. They tell the tragic story of the beauty and usefulness that should have been.
But the story doesn’t end with senseless shapes and shattered edges—humans who live in rebellion against God. Christ the God-man lived in perfect submission to God (John 8:29). He is the “express image of [God’s] person,” the true Hero unmixed with villainy.
Perhaps this is why I feel so conflicted about how novels and movies should portray their fictional characters. On the one hand, I want the characters to reflect the messy reality of my experience. On the other hand, I long for that inward sense of justice to be satisfied by the villain being portrayed as pure evil and the conquering hero as pure goodness.
There is such a hero, but He is no fiction. His name is Jesus.
