Withholding Tax
Jan. 30th, 2004 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaSome time ago, I wrote, "The other thread I am particularly curious to explore is the idea of Withholding from the reader. Especially withholding information about the hero. This is a form of reader-torture that is parallel to hero-torture. (This parallelism brings me back to my obsession with the idea of the Reader/Book ship.) Withholding access to the hero (to his mind or heart, to important facts about him, to a clear sense of his identity, his moral position, etc.) is a kind of UST."
And I gave a small list of examples of Withheld Heroes here.
So here is a chunk of a much longer ramble on this ever-fascinating subject. In general, I think the technique of Withholding is fascinating, because it artificially heightens the reader's erotic hunger to possess the book. But just how the Withheld Hero works within this mechanism, I am not sure. So:
The Withheld Hero
I've been tossing this term around for a while, thinking I understood what I meant by it, even if no one else did.
Would love to hear about all this from some writers who are working on heroes they consider Withheld. (Holly? If you're there and have time: Have you thought about Roiben in this way?)
I've realized that I don't have it clear. And this is a problem because the character I am (supposedly) writing about is such a fellow. The success of my story depends entirely on the main character being veryveryWithheld, and still being compelling, seductive, intriguing, fun.
At the same time, for other reasons, he is definitely a Frilly Shirt Hero. And I've discovered that I've been thinking of these two aspects of the hero as opposites. But they aren't.
So here I am (in order to avoid actually writing the story) trying to reconcile Frilly Shirt with Withheld Hero. I manage it by thinking of Withheld Hero as a larger concept, who is opposed to Accessible Hero. Whereas Frilly Shirt as a subcategory, opposed to Man in Black. And both Man in Black and Frilly Shirt may be Withheld Heroes, or Accessible Heroes, or another kind of Hero.
Disclaimer: I don't really love dicing these fictional constructs ("Hero" etc.) into ever smaller and more academic subcategories with ever narrower definitions. Such categories aren't really useful when you're writing a character, because a well-written character is likely to have many different (and even contradictory) attributes--to be heroic and nonheroic at different times, or Frilly and Black on different occasions, or even all at once. Otherwise he's just a plot device.
Rather, the point of the exercise is to unpack what it is that makes these mechanisms work well or badly so as to make best use of them and work the most hellish magic on the reader. (What I'm finding difficult is not the creation of such a person, but that his Withheldness seems to shut down the plot--events seem to lose their compelling force in the face of his implacable reserve. But I think that's because I'm no damn good at plot--a problem I will set aside for another occasion.)
Also, examining why I find one or another character attractive is an excuse for wallowing in teh sexay. :D
Digression:
I am going to talk about the hero as male because it's simpler in a very long post, and suits my particular purposes. But I think these ideas work equally well for a Heroine.
(An excellent example of a Withheld Heroine is the character Agnese in Isak Dinesen's breathtaking story "The Roads Round Pisa," which is found in her collection Seven Gothic Tales. I love this novella (or long short story); it blows me away. It has all the elements: UST, romance, gender-switching, mystery, fate. )
(I will say, though, that Woman in Black and female Frilly Shirt function somewhat differently--not simply in mirror image or reverse to the male versions. That's for another post, sometime. Frilly Shirt Heroines? Maid Marian, Beauty in "Beauty and the Beast," Rapunzel, Camille, maybe Emma Bovary. Woolf's Orlando (*g*). Some of Colette's heroines. Woman in Black? Emma Peel, Emma Peel, Emma Peel.) /digression.
First question is, what are these ideas--Withheld Hero, Frilly Shirt, Man in Black?
Second is: How do a pair of these ideas function--sometimes in a blend, sometimes in opposition? E.g., if a character is both Withheld and Frilly Shirt, then perhaps he is a very conflicted character. But must he resolve the two parts of his character, or give up one or the other, in order to have his happy ending? Jack Sparrow doesn't. (Of course, his happy ending doesn't include finding and gaining a romantic partner.)
More on Frilly Shirt way down lower in this post.
Defining the Withheld Hero
The basic definition of the Withheld Hero depends on the underlying idea that the fundamental romantic relationship in fiction is between the book and the reader. So I'll repeat the ground rules about that:
Reader/Book OTP
All else depends on the reader forming a romantic (erotic) bond with the book. *
__________
*For "erotic" I borrow Lewis Hyde's definition: "An ‘erotic' commerce," i.e., exchange, is one which opposes "eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular. A market economy is an emanation of logos." Conversely, a gift economy is a manifestation of eros. Of course, both Hyde and I also embrace the more obvious meaning of "eros" within this definition. (Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, NY: Vintage, 1983, p. xiv, n.)
__________
In fiction, the hero of the story is often the vehicle for this bond--the reader falls in love with the hero, and through him or her forms an attachment to the book, to the story. (Well, that's the short version. *g*)
Typically, what this means is that the reader aims to possess the hero, and thereby to take possession--ownership--of the book. (For the purposes of this argument, I use "book" and "story" interchangeably.) "Taking possession" of the book means several things:
1. Understanding it intimately. Understanding its ideas, arguments, meanings.
2. Knowing more than the characters do.
3. Knowing how it all turns out.
This last is the key: We dominate any story that has an ending, because the characters in the book cannot know that their story has ended, but we do. This puts us in the omniscient position: Omniscient Reader usurps the power of Omniscient Author. That is, at the end of a book, there is a transferral of power from the author to the reader. Where the author once controlled the reader's emotions, thoughts, needs, desires, at the end, the author gives up all that and the reader takes over. Hence: possession, ownership of the story. And of course any possession has an erotic element.
In opening a book we are giving up a great deal of power and control to the author. We are submitting ourselves to the world created by the author (that little, tyrannical god). We sink into it and abandon our own real lives for the duration. Yet we retain some power too: We are always in a position to judge the characters in the book, to step back from them and assess, analyze, interpret, criticize what they do and how well they do it. And even more: We judge them--is this one believable? Is that one fully rounded or a paper cutout?
Reader/Hero OTP
In a story driven by a hero, it's the hero who gives us most of our access to understanding the meanings of the story. If the first power relationship is between author and reader, then the second --and most important--power relationship is between hero and reader. We hitch a ride with the hero, clinging to his coattails. We either want to imagine ourselves as him (he is our surrogate), or more commonly we fall in love with him.
Now there are many kinds of hero. The authors of genre romance are the folks who have made the best schematic lists--the decent fellow; the evil-but-redeemable antihero; the unredeemable but nonetheless splendid loner; the brainy clever fellow; the musclebound he-man, etc. And of course the female counterparts of all these. And various combinations and blends. (Holly has posted a nifty list that reflects a bunch of these here make link.)
But from the perspective of the reader's access to the book and its meanings, there are two kinds of heroes:
A) The hero who lets us get to know him, bond with him, sympathize with and understand him, love him, possess him, and/or pretend to be him;
B) The hero who doesn't let us inside his head or heart, who keeps us guessing, who actively refuses us, denies us, rejects us.
The language of our relationship with both kinds of hero is, naturally, the language of romance: We are dating hero A. Hero B turns us down; he seems to be interested in some much prettier or richer girl. (Or handsomer guy, of course.) Even if in the end he relents (or his resolution makes him more accessible), this hero remains largely beyond our grasp.
So what identifies a given hero as B-type, Withheld Hero?
I don't quite know, but I can offer a few observations. Would love to hear from others about this too.
*We don't get inside his pov--or if we do, it is only partial, brief, and not very telling. Or only for very rare and particular moments and reasons. So, first-person narrative is rare, and when it does occur, is untrustworthy. An example of 1st-person Withheld Hero is Hammett's Continental Op, who narrates and is the hero of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, but reveals almost nothing of himself. (In Red Harvest he may even fall in love--it's hard to tell)
*He is "higher" than us--magical, or kingly, or in some other way impossibly elevated: superbly wiser, infinitely more beautiful, stronger, more talented than we can imagine. (Aragorn, descendant of kings; the immortal, magical phouka; Theseus, son of the king in The King Must Die; Nicholas de Fleury who keeps "keys in his head"; Lymond, son of nobility and talented poet, musician, military captain, duelist)
*He lies.
*He breaks the rules of society and culture. He operates according to a different set of rules (Lawrence of Arabia: "Of course it hurts. The trick is not minding that it hurts." "Nothing is written." Marquis de Sade (speaking through various characters in Juliette: St.-Fond: Juliette: "Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man's imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries." Delbène: Juliette: They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch." Or Sade himself, in a letter: "Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?")
*He is suppressed, sublimated, suffering but unwilling or unable to share that hidden self with us. (Athos in Three Musketeers Jack Sparrow? Who knows if he suffers any pain or doubt at all? He shows none.)
*He does not share himself with any of the other characters either--he reveals the presence of an inner life to us and them, but not its substance. He may have doubts, weaknesses, or fears, but what they are is a mystery. The characters around him are as covetous about him as we are and as curious.
*His past is a mystery. (He arrived one day, no one knows from where: Jack Sparrow, Oedipus, Dionysius; he never talks about his past: Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Conrad's Marlow, Hammett's unnamed Continental Op, most of the other protagonists of the hard-boiled school)
*His origins are obscure, possibly tainted. (He's illegitimate, an alien, a foreigner; he's racially mixed, he's not one of us. he has a funny accent)
*He has a Big Secret of some kind, and the suppression of it is a plot point. (I'm really the king; I committed a terrible crime; I killed my lover's parents by mistake; I killed my father and married my mother unwittingly; I love my brother more than my fiancé; I'm really a frog; I look like a fop, but I'm actually the Scarlet Pimpernel)
*He may be crazy (Hamlet, Jack Sparrow--this is also a Trickster attribute)
*Gender ambiguity? Not a required attribute of the Withheld Hero, but it does turn up occasionally as a version of one of the items listed above: the Big Secret, or the tainted origins or the mysterious past. Gender ambiguity seems more connected with Trickster than with Withheldness per se.
*More?
* * *
In order to find these common traits, I made a list of some protagonists in fiction--books and movies--whom I consider Withheld Heroes. This list seems to include most of the heroes I can think of. I began to wonder if there are any heroes who are not Withheld.
But of course there are, The heroes of most of Shakespeare's comedies and many of his history plays, for example. Lord Peter Wimsey is not withheld--we know all about his inner life, his crises and loves. Robin Hood is not Withheld--he has no secrets at all, and no inner doubts, nothing to hide. His outlawry is open, easily explained, and simply justified. Ditto the other Errol Flynn heroes: Captain Blood and Geoffrey Thorpe (the Sea Hawk). But Scaramouche is Withheld (in the Sabatini book; the movie is too silly to try to figure out.)
So I've tried to draw some distinctions: Why is Batman a Withheld Hero, but Superman not? Why is Odysseus Withheld but Achilles not? Why is Hamlet Withheld (I think), but Romeo not? These are crude comparisons; Superman and Achilles are not entirely accessible and Odysseus and Hamlet are not completely inaccessible.
Is it the angst factor? (Partly, yes.)
Do the Withheld ones have a Dark Side and the others not? (Probably; or at any rate, a bigger Dark Side, which causes them more trouble and affects the plot. (E.g., Peter Wimsey has cris des nerfs due to WWI shell shock, but it just makes him more sensitive and attractive; it doesn't alter his habits, ideas, or relationships, nor does it put him at risk.)
Is Trickster a part of Withheld Hero? (Not always, but the moral ambiguity of Trickster is frequently an element of the Withheldness.)
Well, that's a start. Next post will be about Man in Black vs. Frilly Shirt and how they work in a WIthheld Hero. Plus some more Trickster, because you can never have too much Trickster.
But first an Expanded List of Withheld Heroes
Arkady Renko, in Gorky Park (Martin Cruz Smith)
Gadi Becker/Joseph in The Little Drummer Girl (John Le Carre); also his Alec Leamis in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Odysseus (maybe)
Batman
Harry Potter (with some interesting qualifiers--he's an unusual case because he is not yet a complete hero)
Aragorn
Lawrence of Arabia (as invented by T.E. Lawrence in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and reinvented by David Lean in the eponymous movie
Phouka in War for the Oaks (Emma Bull)
Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte--this too is a particularly problematic version of WH)
Ned Beaumont in Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Keya very morally ambiguous Withheld Hero; reappears as Tom Reagan, the character played by Gabriel Byrne in Miller's Crossing
Lymond and Nicholas de Fleury in The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo (Dorothy Dunnett)
Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean (maybe--he is not exactly the hero of the movie, after all)
McCandless in Carpenter's Gothic (William Gaddis)--well, this is Gaddis, so the term "hero" is something of a misnomer *g* summary of Carpenter's Gothic
Hamlet (maybe)
Zeno in The Abyss (Marguerite Yourcenar)
Spock
And I gave a small list of examples of Withheld Heroes here.
So here is a chunk of a much longer ramble on this ever-fascinating subject. In general, I think the technique of Withholding is fascinating, because it artificially heightens the reader's erotic hunger to possess the book. But just how the Withheld Hero works within this mechanism, I am not sure. So:
The Withheld Hero
I've been tossing this term around for a while, thinking I understood what I meant by it, even if no one else did.
Would love to hear about all this from some writers who are working on heroes they consider Withheld. (Holly? If you're there and have time: Have you thought about Roiben in this way?)
I've realized that I don't have it clear. And this is a problem because the character I am (supposedly) writing about is such a fellow. The success of my story depends entirely on the main character being veryveryWithheld, and still being compelling, seductive, intriguing, fun.
At the same time, for other reasons, he is definitely a Frilly Shirt Hero. And I've discovered that I've been thinking of these two aspects of the hero as opposites. But they aren't.
So here I am (in order to avoid actually writing the story) trying to reconcile Frilly Shirt with Withheld Hero. I manage it by thinking of Withheld Hero as a larger concept, who is opposed to Accessible Hero. Whereas Frilly Shirt as a subcategory, opposed to Man in Black. And both Man in Black and Frilly Shirt may be Withheld Heroes, or Accessible Heroes, or another kind of Hero.
Disclaimer: I don't really love dicing these fictional constructs ("Hero" etc.) into ever smaller and more academic subcategories with ever narrower definitions. Such categories aren't really useful when you're writing a character, because a well-written character is likely to have many different (and even contradictory) attributes--to be heroic and nonheroic at different times, or Frilly and Black on different occasions, or even all at once. Otherwise he's just a plot device.
Rather, the point of the exercise is to unpack what it is that makes these mechanisms work well or badly so as to make best use of them and work the most hellish magic on the reader. (What I'm finding difficult is not the creation of such a person, but that his Withheldness seems to shut down the plot--events seem to lose their compelling force in the face of his implacable reserve. But I think that's because I'm no damn good at plot--a problem I will set aside for another occasion.)
Also, examining why I find one or another character attractive is an excuse for wallowing in teh sexay. :D
Digression:
I am going to talk about the hero as male because it's simpler in a very long post, and suits my particular purposes. But I think these ideas work equally well for a Heroine.
(An excellent example of a Withheld Heroine is the character Agnese in Isak Dinesen's breathtaking story "The Roads Round Pisa," which is found in her collection Seven Gothic Tales. I love this novella (or long short story); it blows me away. It has all the elements: UST, romance, gender-switching, mystery, fate. )
(I will say, though, that Woman in Black and female Frilly Shirt function somewhat differently--not simply in mirror image or reverse to the male versions. That's for another post, sometime. Frilly Shirt Heroines? Maid Marian, Beauty in "Beauty and the Beast," Rapunzel, Camille, maybe Emma Bovary. Woolf's Orlando (*g*). Some of Colette's heroines. Woman in Black? Emma Peel, Emma Peel, Emma Peel.) /digression.
First question is, what are these ideas--Withheld Hero, Frilly Shirt, Man in Black?
Second is: How do a pair of these ideas function--sometimes in a blend, sometimes in opposition? E.g., if a character is both Withheld and Frilly Shirt, then perhaps he is a very conflicted character. But must he resolve the two parts of his character, or give up one or the other, in order to have his happy ending? Jack Sparrow doesn't. (Of course, his happy ending doesn't include finding and gaining a romantic partner.)
More on Frilly Shirt way down lower in this post.
Defining the Withheld Hero
The basic definition of the Withheld Hero depends on the underlying idea that the fundamental romantic relationship in fiction is between the book and the reader. So I'll repeat the ground rules about that:
Reader/Book OTP
All else depends on the reader forming a romantic (erotic) bond with the book. *
__________
*For "erotic" I borrow Lewis Hyde's definition: "An ‘erotic' commerce," i.e., exchange, is one which opposes "eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular. A market economy is an emanation of logos." Conversely, a gift economy is a manifestation of eros. Of course, both Hyde and I also embrace the more obvious meaning of "eros" within this definition. (Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, NY: Vintage, 1983, p. xiv, n.)
__________
In fiction, the hero of the story is often the vehicle for this bond--the reader falls in love with the hero, and through him or her forms an attachment to the book, to the story. (Well, that's the short version. *g*)
Typically, what this means is that the reader aims to possess the hero, and thereby to take possession--ownership--of the book. (For the purposes of this argument, I use "book" and "story" interchangeably.) "Taking possession" of the book means several things:
1. Understanding it intimately. Understanding its ideas, arguments, meanings.
2. Knowing more than the characters do.
3. Knowing how it all turns out.
This last is the key: We dominate any story that has an ending, because the characters in the book cannot know that their story has ended, but we do. This puts us in the omniscient position: Omniscient Reader usurps the power of Omniscient Author. That is, at the end of a book, there is a transferral of power from the author to the reader. Where the author once controlled the reader's emotions, thoughts, needs, desires, at the end, the author gives up all that and the reader takes over. Hence: possession, ownership of the story. And of course any possession has an erotic element.
In opening a book we are giving up a great deal of power and control to the author. We are submitting ourselves to the world created by the author (that little, tyrannical god). We sink into it and abandon our own real lives for the duration. Yet we retain some power too: We are always in a position to judge the characters in the book, to step back from them and assess, analyze, interpret, criticize what they do and how well they do it. And even more: We judge them--is this one believable? Is that one fully rounded or a paper cutout?
Reader/Hero OTP
In a story driven by a hero, it's the hero who gives us most of our access to understanding the meanings of the story. If the first power relationship is between author and reader, then the second --and most important--power relationship is between hero and reader. We hitch a ride with the hero, clinging to his coattails. We either want to imagine ourselves as him (he is our surrogate), or more commonly we fall in love with him.
Now there are many kinds of hero. The authors of genre romance are the folks who have made the best schematic lists--the decent fellow; the evil-but-redeemable antihero; the unredeemable but nonetheless splendid loner; the brainy clever fellow; the musclebound he-man, etc. And of course the female counterparts of all these. And various combinations and blends. (Holly has posted a nifty list that reflects a bunch of these here make link.)
But from the perspective of the reader's access to the book and its meanings, there are two kinds of heroes:
A) The hero who lets us get to know him, bond with him, sympathize with and understand him, love him, possess him, and/or pretend to be him;
B) The hero who doesn't let us inside his head or heart, who keeps us guessing, who actively refuses us, denies us, rejects us.
The language of our relationship with both kinds of hero is, naturally, the language of romance: We are dating hero A. Hero B turns us down; he seems to be interested in some much prettier or richer girl. (Or handsomer guy, of course.) Even if in the end he relents (or his resolution makes him more accessible), this hero remains largely beyond our grasp.
So what identifies a given hero as B-type, Withheld Hero?
I don't quite know, but I can offer a few observations. Would love to hear from others about this too.
*We don't get inside his pov--or if we do, it is only partial, brief, and not very telling. Or only for very rare and particular moments and reasons. So, first-person narrative is rare, and when it does occur, is untrustworthy. An example of 1st-person Withheld Hero is Hammett's Continental Op, who narrates and is the hero of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, but reveals almost nothing of himself. (In Red Harvest he may even fall in love--it's hard to tell)
*He is "higher" than us--magical, or kingly, or in some other way impossibly elevated: superbly wiser, infinitely more beautiful, stronger, more talented than we can imagine. (Aragorn, descendant of kings; the immortal, magical phouka; Theseus, son of the king in The King Must Die; Nicholas de Fleury who keeps "keys in his head"; Lymond, son of nobility and talented poet, musician, military captain, duelist)
*He lies.
*He breaks the rules of society and culture. He operates according to a different set of rules (Lawrence of Arabia: "Of course it hurts. The trick is not minding that it hurts." "Nothing is written." Marquis de Sade (speaking through various characters in Juliette: St.-Fond: Juliette: "Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man's imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries." Delbène: Juliette: They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch." Or Sade himself, in a letter: "Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?")
*He is suppressed, sublimated, suffering but unwilling or unable to share that hidden self with us. (Athos in Three Musketeers Jack Sparrow? Who knows if he suffers any pain or doubt at all? He shows none.)
*He does not share himself with any of the other characters either--he reveals the presence of an inner life to us and them, but not its substance. He may have doubts, weaknesses, or fears, but what they are is a mystery. The characters around him are as covetous about him as we are and as curious.
*His past is a mystery. (He arrived one day, no one knows from where: Jack Sparrow, Oedipus, Dionysius; he never talks about his past: Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Conrad's Marlow, Hammett's unnamed Continental Op, most of the other protagonists of the hard-boiled school)
*His origins are obscure, possibly tainted. (He's illegitimate, an alien, a foreigner; he's racially mixed, he's not one of us. he has a funny accent)
*He has a Big Secret of some kind, and the suppression of it is a plot point. (I'm really the king; I committed a terrible crime; I killed my lover's parents by mistake; I killed my father and married my mother unwittingly; I love my brother more than my fiancé; I'm really a frog; I look like a fop, but I'm actually the Scarlet Pimpernel)
*He may be crazy (Hamlet, Jack Sparrow--this is also a Trickster attribute)
*Gender ambiguity? Not a required attribute of the Withheld Hero, but it does turn up occasionally as a version of one of the items listed above: the Big Secret, or the tainted origins or the mysterious past. Gender ambiguity seems more connected with Trickster than with Withheldness per se.
*More?
* * *
In order to find these common traits, I made a list of some protagonists in fiction--books and movies--whom I consider Withheld Heroes. This list seems to include most of the heroes I can think of. I began to wonder if there are any heroes who are not Withheld.
But of course there are, The heroes of most of Shakespeare's comedies and many of his history plays, for example. Lord Peter Wimsey is not withheld--we know all about his inner life, his crises and loves. Robin Hood is not Withheld--he has no secrets at all, and no inner doubts, nothing to hide. His outlawry is open, easily explained, and simply justified. Ditto the other Errol Flynn heroes: Captain Blood and Geoffrey Thorpe (the Sea Hawk). But Scaramouche is Withheld (in the Sabatini book; the movie is too silly to try to figure out.)
So I've tried to draw some distinctions: Why is Batman a Withheld Hero, but Superman not? Why is Odysseus Withheld but Achilles not? Why is Hamlet Withheld (I think), but Romeo not? These are crude comparisons; Superman and Achilles are not entirely accessible and Odysseus and Hamlet are not completely inaccessible.
Is it the angst factor? (Partly, yes.)
Do the Withheld ones have a Dark Side and the others not? (Probably; or at any rate, a bigger Dark Side, which causes them more trouble and affects the plot. (E.g., Peter Wimsey has cris des nerfs due to WWI shell shock, but it just makes him more sensitive and attractive; it doesn't alter his habits, ideas, or relationships, nor does it put him at risk.)
Is Trickster a part of Withheld Hero? (Not always, but the moral ambiguity of Trickster is frequently an element of the Withheldness.)
Well, that's a start. Next post will be about Man in Black vs. Frilly Shirt and how they work in a WIthheld Hero. Plus some more Trickster, because you can never have too much Trickster.
But first an Expanded List of Withheld Heroes
Arkady Renko, in Gorky Park (Martin Cruz Smith)
Gadi Becker/Joseph in The Little Drummer Girl (John Le Carre); also his Alec Leamis in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Odysseus (maybe)
Batman
Harry Potter (with some interesting qualifiers--he's an unusual case because he is not yet a complete hero)
Aragorn
Lawrence of Arabia (as invented by T.E. Lawrence in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and reinvented by David Lean in the eponymous movie
Phouka in War for the Oaks (Emma Bull)
Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte--this too is a particularly problematic version of WH)
Ned Beaumont in Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Keya very morally ambiguous Withheld Hero; reappears as Tom Reagan, the character played by Gabriel Byrne in Miller's Crossing
Lymond and Nicholas de Fleury in The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo (Dorothy Dunnett)
Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean (maybe--he is not exactly the hero of the movie, after all)
McCandless in Carpenter's Gothic (William Gaddis)--well, this is Gaddis, so the term "hero" is something of a misnomer *g* summary of Carpenter's Gothic
Hamlet (maybe)
Zeno in The Abyss (Marguerite Yourcenar)
Spock
