Gratuitous Hero Torture

[malsperanza]

I thought it might be useful in the course of this discussion to name some books that I think use Gratuitous Hero Torture and that are not, in my opinion, "genre" fiction--defined, in part, as fiction that uses GHT in formulaic ways.

This is a random list, meant to be illustrative of range, rather than comprehensive in any sense.

Ernie Levy in The Last of the Just (possibly the most serious book I have ever read, though it is also very funny).

Zeno, the persecuted alchemist in The Abyss

Wyatt Gwyon, the forger in Gaddis's The Recognitions

Heathcliff

Jim in Lord Jim

Maybe even Aschenbach in Death in Venice, if it's not too bizarre to call him the hero

Harry Potter

Frodo (possibly)

Pyrrhus in An Arrow's Flight

Lear (not sure about this one: not sure about his hero status)

Hamlet (see discussion below)

Marlowe's Edward II (ditto, courtesy of Conversant)

Shakespeare's Richard II? Hm, not convinced but willing to try it (per Conversant)

And I have to mention one example that isn't available in English, alas, Mr Silvera in a lovely Italian novel called The Lover with No Fixed Abode (L'Amante senza fissa dimora)

Jesus, in the Gospels of the New Testament (possibly genre fiction, depending on how we resolve the question of wish-fulfillment as a marker of genre)

Gilgamesh (exile and angst! exile and angst!)

Most of the Greek canon:

Iliad
Odyssey (maybe)
Oedipus
Antigone (a rare female tortured hero)
Orestes (in fact, the whole Atreides family)

And now a couple of titles that are usually called "genre" fiction, but that are, IMO, very good books:

Philip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (where he gets beaten so badly he tries to commit suicide)

Similarly, Ned Beaumont in The Glass Key

Lymond and Nicholas in the two Dorothy Dunnett series

James Cobham in Freedom and Necessity (a lesser book, but a good example of the tortured hero)

And then there is The Fountainhead, a veryverybad book, but no one could deny that it is chock full of GHT


It would be fun to add to this list. I'm prepared, frex, to include both Harry and Draco from the Draco Trilogy . . . depending on how it ends. Because, as we shall see downthread, How It Ends is key.

Other suggestions are invited.

ETA:

From Tipgardner (I haven't read these):

Saladin Chamcha (Satanic Verses)

The narrator of Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Murakami)

Protagonists in:

Money, by Martin Amis
Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
Fall of a Sparrow, by Robert Hellenga
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, by Haruki Murakami (Not sure I agree: he is confused, befuddled, misled, mistreated, but it's hard to say how deep his angst goes... well, maybe. Worth putting on the list anyhow)

Comments

Part Two (epilogue)

[conversant.livejournal.com]

About Shakespeare's borrowings from Marlowe: they are legion, and every time fanfic writers get too huffed up about 'plagiarism' when it is really just riffing on favorite pop-culture lines in the public domain, I think of Shakespeare's opportunistic mining of Marlowe's plays for their best moments. Shakespeare explicitly re-worked Marlowe several times: most famously, of course, he reworks The Jew of Malta in The Merchant of Venice (and in this pair, I think Marlowe comes out on top), but he also quite openly borrows scenes from Tamburlaine in Henry V (Henry's scene with the governor of Harfleur reworks T's remorseless treatment of I can't now remember which city) and then there's the ruthless treatment of the deposed monarchs in EII and RII.

Shakespeare treated Marlowe's plays as grist for a clubby sort of 'Did you catch all my allusions to him this time?' way. His most obvious riff on Marlowe happens when we here how Shylock reacted to his daughter's elopement with a Christian: Salanio says:

I never heard a passion so confused,
So strange, outrageous, and so variable,
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets:
'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter!
A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,
Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter!
And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones,
Stolen by my daughter! Justice! find the girl;
She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.'
Salarino replies with even more mockery:
Why, all the boys in Venice follow him,
Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats. (2.8.12-24)

This borrows what must have been an infamous representation of the stage Jew in Marlowe's Barabas, who is overjoyed when his (at that moment, still-faithful) daughter steals his treasure back from the Christians and throws it down to him in the street:

Oh my girle,
My gold, my fortune, my felicity;
Strength to my soule, death to mine enemy;
Welcome the first beginner of my blisse:
Oh Abigal, Abigal, that I had thee here too,
Then my desires were fully satisfied,
But I will practice thy enlargement thence:
Oh girle, oh gold, oh beauty, oh my blisse! (2.1.51-59)

need a better proofreader!

[conversant.livejournal.com]

when we here
when we hear

*goes to bed*

Re: Part Two (epilogue)

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I haven't time tonight to absorb this properly, and so must be satisfied for now with just thanking you--it is fascinating, as are your other comments, upthread. Much to think about...