English
I am going to talk about the thematic of the Characters And Their Representations, more precisely through the theme of the anti-hero.
In literature, a character is person who draws the attention by the aspects of his/her personality. He/She cans be a real person or fictional.
An anti-hero is a character who doesn't possess traditionnal specifications in his personality or in his physical qualities.
To talk about of this thematic, I have chosen the first chapter of Lord of the Flies by William Golding and the third chapter of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald.
Firstly, Lord of the Flies written by William Golding in 1954, the story speaks about a British plane which crashes on an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors are teenagers.
It is an island book like Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
I have chosen the first chapter because in this passage we can see a confrontation between the hero named Ralph and the anti-hero called Jack.
The extract is a real confrontation because there is a vote to elect the chief of the teenagers. Jack the anti-hero is described as an arrogant boy as we can see line 15: "Jack with simple arrogance", then line 24-25, he seems to disagree for a vote: "Jack started to protest".
Moreover, through the book he expresses an unquenchable desire to hunt and kill pigs and he spends hours in solitude, traversing the island.
He begins to paint his face with clay and earth, masking his humanity from the pigs and inspiring terrible fear among the boys.
The aspects of the anti-hero in this book are represented by the physical changes of Jack.
Now, I'm going to talk about another anti-hero, Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby written by Scott Fitzgerald in 1925.
The expression of the anti-hero are revealed by his dubious activities.
The story speaks about Nick Carraway a bond salesman who moves close to a big mansion which belongs to a rich man called Jay Gatsby. They are always huge parties with Jazz and alcohol. The plot is set during the 20's in New York City, so in the USA during this period there is the prohibition and that's the Jazz Age.
However, to come back to theme of the anti-hero and the way it is represented, we have to look the end of the passage. Then, we can see that Jay Gatsby is a mysterious man, they are speculations about him.
There is a woman who says that he is a killer: "Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once" and another woman says that he was a German spy: "it's more that he was a German spy during the war". And the passage ends with: I'll bet he killed a man". So, as we can read, nobody knows who is Gatsby and the informations about him are negatives. Some people say that he is probably a killer.
Plus, later in the book we learn that he is bootlegger and it was forbidden during the 20's on account of the Probition Law.
Finally, in this book, Gatsby's actions who make him a perfect anti-hero, his fortune is based on the bootlegging.
Now, I am going to show you my personal document. So, it is the cover from the film American Psycho, it is the adaptation of the book with the same name by Bret Easton Ellis. American Psycho is the story of Patrick Bateman, a rich, arrogant, twenty-something yuppie in 1980’s New York, who also happens to be an insane serial killer.
He is the perfect anti-heroe, he kills without any remorse or compassion. Plus, Patrick Bateman is vain and materialistic. Through the book he manages to maim, torture, and kill dozens of people.
To conclude, we have seen different types of representation of anti-heroes, in Lord of the Flies with Jack and his physical changes. In The Great Gatsby with his fortune which is based on the bootlegging. And in American Psycho with his murders.
All of them have done awful actions thay why they are anti-heroes but they have something interesting in their personality, that's why we like them in a certain way.
