Wanted Undead or Alive:: Vampire Hunters and Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil

ALIVE

INTRODUCTION: THAT WHOLE GOOD AND EVIL THING

Paul Gustave Doré, Cain Kills Abel

To many, Cain’s killing of his brother Abel was not only the first murder, but also the first crime. Whether the story is true or merely a parable used to make a point about morality, the need for laws, and the sanctity of life, it allows us to take a hard look at the enormous consequences of the act of violence.

Depending on whom you talk to—or which spiritual path you follow—the struggle between good and evil is either the oldest conflict known to man or the second oldest. If we factor evolution into the mix, then the oldest struggle is for basic survival—food, shelter, and safety from natural predators. But once early man had something of a handle on those, back during those first hours of leisure time huddled around cook fires in caves, the struggle against evil began. With the advent of a belief in a larger world—God or gods, demons, monsters, and elemental forces—the struggle became a battle. The rise of religion turned the battle into an outright war, and the development of philosophy transformed that struggle into an art.

Now, here at the beginning of the second decade of the new millennium, we see this conflict played out in countless forms. It shows up in politics, in the friction between ideologies, in sports, in pop culture, in war, in dating, and just about everywhere else. Where there is no obvious evil (a serial killer, a tyrant’s attempt at ethnic genocide, etc.) we personify natural disasters so that tsunamis and hurricanes become evil. We demonize sickness so that the process of treating a disease becomes a fight against death—as if death was a conscious being with a personal stake in it.

Funny thing is, we humans kind of groove on the conflict. The fight between good and evil, whether as an external battle against a monster or an internal struggle against temptation, makes for great storytelling, and we are certainly a storytelling species. Storytelling is in our nature, a fact we’ve known since the earliest humans learned how to mix pigment and paint on cave walls.¹

In Wanted Undead or Alive, we’ll explore a number of variations on this eternal struggle. The central theme will be the fight against supernatural evil, but along the way we’ll investigate personal evil (what Joseph Conrad labeled the heart of darkness), temptation, corruption, ideological clashes, and more. There’s certainly no shortage of examples of conflict in the human story. We should probably feel bad about that, but it’s in our nature to accept that evil exists and to believe, or at least hope, that something good (or less evil) will step up to oppose it.

Along the way we’ll talk with all kinds of people, from clerics and politicians to pop culture experts and the guy on the street. Insights on the struggle come in all forms and frequencies.

This book is meant to be browsed, so don’t feel guilty about jumping around. Guilt is a form of shame, which in turn is based on the belief that you’ve done something wrong. Wrong is the opposite of right, and that’s just another tweak on the whole good and evil thing. We don’t want you to feel bad. Just enjoy the ride.

1

THE ROOTS OF GOOD VS. EVIL

Paul Gustave Doré, Lucifer, King of Hell

The name devil derives from the Greek word diabolos, which means slanderer or accuser. As a concept, the devil symbolizes all of the baser, negative emotions and desires such as temptation, evil, greed, and hatred, and is antithetical to the higher virtues. Most cultures have some kind of devil figure, a diametric opposite of the God/creator force.

EVIL 101

So…what exactly is evil?

In simplest terms, evil is a label given to anything that is deliberately immoral, cruel, harmful, or unjust. Evil is different from bad, and that difference is entirely built upon intent. Easy examples: Losing control of a car and running over a puppy is bad. Deliberately chasing it up onto the lawn and running it over is evil.

Most evil, however, is conditional on a point of view and situational variables. Take the puppy example. If the puppy is rabid and is about to bite a toddler in a sandbox, then driving a car over it is a good act, even a heroic one. But by this same example, is the puppy now evil for wanting to bite the kid? From one point of view it was deliberately intending to bite the toddler; from another it can easily be argued that the dog was not capable of normal behavior because of the active symptoms of a disease known to create erratic behavior.

The sound you hear is a big ol’ can of worms being opened up.

This argument can be extended in a lot of directions. If we replace the puppy and toddler with a man and a woman, then if the man stabs the woman to death is he evil? If he deliberately wishes to degrade and harm the woman, we’d all pretty much agree that, yeah, he’s evil. But what if the killer is a psychotic driven to violence by a brain tumor or an imbalance of brain chemistry? The evil label is hard to pin to that because choice seems to have been edited out of the equation, or at the very least the power of personal choice has been severely weakened.

This is why most states will incarcerate and treat a homicidal maniac rather than execute him. Then you have the question of nature versus nurture. Is a person who commits evil disposed to do so because of the way he’s organically wired? Or does it require one or more negative influences to shove a person toward the dark side? Case studies of many violent and degraded serial murderers reveal that they were the victims of abusive childhoods. Is that enough? If we’re asked to accept a bad childhood as the gun from which the evil adult bullet is fired, then why aren’t all abused people evil? Or…even most of them? Why don’t all people with chemical imbalances or brain tumors turn to mass murder?

The nature versus nurture argument, particularly as it relates to evil, seems to be lacking a crucial third component: choice. Choice is a central component to the unique makeup of the human mind. Even a person who feels a powerful call from his or her internal darkness can make a choice whether to answer or ignore.

The Root (Word) of All Evil

In Old English is was Yfel; in German it’s Übel, in Dutch it’s Euvel. The exact meaning is uncertain, though linguists and historians believe it dates back to early words for transgression, or sin.

And it is choice, you see, that gives us an understanding of evil. Without choice evil does not exist because evil itself is a choice. Evil isn’t the action, it’s the intention behind the action.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

In many cultures evil is something a person does only when under the influence of a negative spiritual force such as the devil or a possessing demon. This extends into most forms of supernatural belief. It’s easier to understand—and even accept—the reality of an otherwise ordinary person doing an evil act if we accept that a demonic force drove him to it. Especially if he was driven to it against his will, which makes the comforting argument that the natural inclination of people is to resist or oppose evil rather than perpetrate it.

This logic can be broadened to accept that all harmful acts occur because an evil force makes it so. Evil is seen in disease and storms and catastrophes of all kinds, and for many people this is a strangely comforting thing.

We can see it in the rationalization for infant mortality before sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) was understood. Many of the world’s vampiric beliefs are built around the unexpected death of a child—a child who dies in the night with no visible marks, no preexisting health conditions, no other logical reason. For the parents of such a child, especially those in preindustrial cultures hundreds of years ago, the need to have an answer to this inexplicable tragedy was of first importance. The unexplained is unbearable; it erodes confidence and faith and sanity, particularly when it involves so significant a loss as the death of someone so innocent. There must be a reason.

So what was it?

In the absence of a physical cause—bite or disease or a bad fall—the grieving parents looked elsewhere for an answer. Simple folk could simply not accept that God had killed their young and sinless child. So…if not natural causes and not God, then there must be some unnatural cause that is antithetical to the loving and benign nature of God. In order to restore some semblance of balance, of justice to their world, they had to accept the possibility that there was something out there that wanted to do harm to their child, which had in fact done harm.

Hence the birth of malevolent and predatory monsters.

If they could accept that some kind of monster came under cover of darkness to do deliberate harm to the child, then this—however horrific and tragic—made a kind of sense. There are enough parallels in nature to give it sense: animals hunting and killing one another. The leap from the knowledge of animal predators to a belief in supernatural predators is not that big.

Such beliefs even persist into modern days. After 9/11 some televangelists declared that it was God’s punishment on gays that led the al Qaeda to commit their terrorist acts.

Yes, take a moment here to admire the scope of that stupidity.

Which brings up another twist on the good and evil thing. For some individuals, the supernatural intrusion is on the part of a holy entity—God, an angel, etc.—against one or more humans who have embraced evil. This thinking has been the basis for every holy war in history in that one or both sides feel that they have been empowered and mandated by the Eternal to go lay a smack-down on the [fill in the blank—infidel, unholy, heretical, whatever].

There is enough evidence to support the contention that many organized religions have fostered beliefs in evil. It’s good church politics and it’s a great sales tool. Depending on your own personal beliefs it may even be true.¹

Good vs. Evil

"The most effective good versus evil storytelling I’ve been a part of was Pan’s Labyrinth. So complex and so reminiscent of the wrestling of childhood demons we all had to conquer. Being involved with the Hellboy world has also involved fleshing out a struggle of an inherent evil within us that we have the choice to overcome or not…Good and evil battle it out in our hearts every day. Watching or reading fantasy stories where these forces have names and faces inspires us to go back home and finish that battle of our own."—Actor Doug Jones plays Abe Sapien in the Hellboy films, among other roles.

The belief in supernatural evil has flickered a bit in modern scientific times, as seen in the case of SIDS. Nowadays we know that SIDS exists, even if we don’t understand everything about it. Because we know that SIDS exists there seems little to support the old belief that an invisible vampire is the cause of these tragedies. Similarly, an understanding of catalepsy, catatonia, porphyry, rabies, and other medical disorders can account for many of the incidents of the dead rising, erratic behavior, skin pallor, and other symptoms that are commonly attached to monsters like vampires and werewolves.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL

Western philosophers have tended toward a different view of evil, seeing it as an expression of base human emotions such as greed, anger, frustration, resentment, envy, or lust. In Plato’s Dialogues, Socrates (c. 469–399 B.C.) observed, From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

The great philosopher also said, The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. This view that evil was an expression of human ignorance is easy to understand when we view human behavior. Humans tend to fear what they don’t understand, and fear of a thing very often leads to violence toward that thing.

Socrates also viewed retribution as a source of evil, as he eloquently stated: One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

This philosophic view of evil is more centered on human weakness and failure than on any supernatural force or deliberate maliciousness.

Sociologically speaking, evil is a useful way for science to quantify aberrant behavior. The more comfortable word among sociologists and psychologists, however, is sociopath. This is a person who demonstrates extreme self-serving behavior, an apparent lack of a conscience, and a marked inability to empathize with others. Sociopaths generally feel no remorse for harming other people and seldom demonstrate any restraint in doing so. Though many do possess enough control to be careful when avoiding implication, as seen in the actions of so many serial killers.

However, sociopathic personality disorder—previously called psychopathic mental disorder—as a label or explanation is frequently called into criticism by the general public, law enforcement, and the clergy because it appears to be offered as an excuse (though not a justification) for very bad behavior. Some researchers even hold that this label holds no more real weight than the label of evil and again here we cross over into the question of whether the sociopath is a product of nature or nurture, or whether his actions are motivated purely by choice. This debate has been raging since the early days of Freud and Jung and there’s no light at the end of that philosophical tunnel.

And this ties to a viewpoint presented by the Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza² (1632–1677), who said, So everyone, by the highest right of Nature, judges what is good and what is evil, considers his own advantage according to his own temperament… A view that suggests that the difference between good and evil is merely one of personal inclinations.

Choice.

Why Write About It?

It’s at the core of our lives. Statistics tell us that we all cross swords with some form of evil at some point in our lives—maybe in nothing more sinister than getting shortchanged by a cashier, or having a wallet lifted by a pickpocket. But if we’re unlucky, we come face to face with the kind of uncompromising evil that makes supernatural evil seem mild. Evil exists, and we all know it does. Storytelling helps show us that we can face it and survive.—Rachel Caine is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires, Weather Warden, and Outcast Season series.

DEVILISH DUALITY

Most cultures in which a belief or understanding of evil can be found view it as one-half of a philosophic whole; the other being good. This duality—the eternal struggle of good versus evil—takes many forms.

It’s fair to say that evil cannot exist without good. If nothing else, it’s a form of measurement. You can’t have up without down, hot without cold. One state is defined by the distance from its opposite. A Catholic view holds that God cannot exist without the devil, that they are inseparable. And although this doesn’t actually square with scripture, it’s both a compelling argument to reinforce faith and a simple explanation for the way in which the universe works.

A more new age viewpoint is that the universe is composed of positive and negative energy, always in motion and always seeking balance. This view of an energetic relationship between the extremes is an attempt to excise human emotions and personification from the natural order. This philosophy isn’t new, of course, but it serves as the secular name for the concept of yin and yang.³

Evil Impulses

We all have the capacity to be good, evil or a combination of both. Do we act on our evil impulses is the ultimate question. There is a fascination and repulsion with people who are so monstrous. On the flip side, we fantasize about being a true hero—someone who has superpowers or is able to cure a deadly disease and save the world. That is why endless TV shows, films and novels are about superheroes and villains. We all like to see the good guy win even though we may secretly identify with the bad guy.—Ellen Dubin portrayed Giggerota the Wicked on Lexx and appeared in The Collector, Highlander: The Raven, and Forever Knight.

This belief is known as moral dualism, and the key concept is that there is a constant and eternal struggle between opposite forces. Call them good and evil, light and dark, benevolent and malignant, or order and chaos.

WWJD?

Clerics, philosophers, cops, and judges have wondered whether good and evil are defined by cultural customs and laws or by our shared humanity. An argument can be made that virtually all cultures view murder, rape, child molestation, and torture as evil.

Except when they’re not. Or, at least, except when they are permitted or sanctioned.

Murder is considered evil because it isn’t permitted by law. The law defines it, not the act. A person killing another person is not always evil. We know that from every war ever fought. We know it from self-defense. We know it from state-sanctioned executions. We even know it from euthanasia. So…it’s not the killing that defines it as evil, but the transgression of a law written by humans.

Chad Savage, Nightmare Visions

Any good story is based on some sort of conflict, and the simplest conflict possible is good vs. evil—even toddlers can understand that one, hence fairy tales. The storytelling gets more complex as we get older, but when you boil ’em down, they still usually have pretty well-defined Good Guys and Bad Guys. I think that’s why stories that fall into gray areas are so disturbing to us—stories that end on a morally neutral (or amoral) note are often very jolting. As a culture, we like to see evil punished, maybe because we know in real life that often doesn’t happen.—Chad Savage is the artist behind Sinister Visions, Inc., a full-service visual design studio catering to the horror, Halloween, and haunted house industries.

Many people kill. Some enjoy the hell out of it and are rewarded for it. A suicide bomber, though viewed as evil by the families of the survivors, is regarded as a great hero by the followers of his own ideology. A preacher presiding over the funerals of the victims of terrorism will shake his fist and speak of the evils of such actions; while on the other side of the world another cleric will praise God and speak of the heavenly reward for the killer. Same person. Is he evil or good?

A soldier who kills the enemy is a hero. A soldier who continues to kill the enemy after a cease-fire is announced is a murderer.

If someone kidnaps a random person, straps him to a chair, and inflicts torture on him, we view this as evil. Yet during times of conflict governments have given official approval for torture. It’s interesting to note that torture isn’t generally called that by the sanctioning government. Since we—and the general public—associate torture with evil, we don’t want to regard ourselves as evil, and therefore we give it a more acceptable label. During the Bush administration torture was called enhanced interrogation techniques. Has a much cleaner ring to it, though I doubt the subjects of the torture appreciated the difference.

And that raises a conundrum. Call it the Jack Bauer paradox, and unless you’ve been living in a cave you’re probably aware that Jack Bauer is the lead character on the Fox television show 24. Jack is undoubtedly the hero, but he has done some questionable things during his race against the clock. The argument goes like this: We absolutely will not torture. Never, under any circumstances. Okay, fair enough. It’s a view most sane and moral people would agree to without reservation. Except…what if there was a nuclear bomb set to explode in the center of a densely populated city and one person, a terrorist, knew where it was. The clock is ticking and hundreds of thousands could die, but everyone could be saved if someone can get to the bomb in time. Every second matters. Would it be acceptable to torture the terrorist for the information so that all those lives could be spared?

Most people would pick up the pliers or wire the terrorist’s testicles to a car battery if it meant saving all those lives. If anyone insists they wouldn’t, put a polygraph cuff on them and tell them that their own family would die in the blast as well. Then ask if they wouldn’t cross that line.

This is what philosophers have labeled an acceptable evil or a necessary evil. Jack Bauer isn’t a bad guy, but the scriptwriters keep putting him in positions where there are no other doors left open and only hard choices are left. So…under those circumstances, what would Jack do?

What would you and I do? If it meant saving a hundred thousand orphans from being murdered, I think Mother Teresa would have gone medieval.

That’s necessary evil. No one has yet been able to come up with anything approaching an answer to this conundrum.

UNNECESSARY EVIL

Some evil acts can be labeled as temporary insanity or crimes of passion, and maybe they are. These labels cover everything from popping a cap in an unfaithful spouse to road rage.

Take that up a notch and you have multiple individuals committing antisocial or violent acts—mass hysteria, the mob mentality. Psychologists have made careers out of explaining and defending this kind of behavior. But when we turn the dial all the way up to ethnic genocide, can there possibly be an explanation or have we crossed the line from a momentary lapse of reason into true evil?

. A year earlier in Rwanda, a Hutu power group known as the Akazu perpetrated the mass murder of Tutsis and Hutu political moderates; and over the course of one hundred days they slaughtered an estimated eight hundred thousand people. Some estimates put the number higher, at a million victims, a number equal to 20 percent of the total Rwanda population.

These massacres were years in the making, as was the Nazi Final Solution and other campaigns of genocide. Not rash acts, but cold choices.

It makes you wonder why we look so hard for our evil to be of supernatural origin. We humans seem to be pretty talented at it without demonic help.

MONSTERS (AND THE PEOPLE WHO HUNT THEM)

However, the belief in supernatural evil persists. Exorcisms still occur. Hauntings are investigated. People wear charms against evil. Congregations pray for protection against unspecified harm.

It can be argued that the belief in monsters persists as much because of pop culture as because of ignorance. Possibly more so. Books, movies, comics, TV, video games, and all of the other forms of entertainment continue to showcase vampires, werewolves, vengeance ghosts, demons, dark gods, and other unnatural nasties.

Scaring the bejesus out of people is big business. If you’re reading this book you grasp that concept. You probably have horror movie DVDs at home, maybe some dog-eared Stephen King novels. Shows like Supernatural and Fringe are on your TiVo, and a lineup of American remakes of Japanese horror flicks are in your Netflix queue.

Go ahead…admit it. You like being scared.

Maybe…you even like to imagine what it would be like to be the monster. A lot more people empathize with Dracula than Van Helsing. The monsters are more fun.

Does Good Win or Does Evil Fail?

In general, good survives in my books by holding to its principles…by believing in the things that I want to believe in, in my real life. Evil fails, when it fails (which, truthfully, is most of the time), by underestimating the good guys’ willingness to sacrifice their lives. Because that’s what heroes are: people who, without regard for their own safety, are willing to sacrifice themselves to save the day.—Rachel Caine is a bestselling author.

In They Bite,⁴ authors Jonathan Maberry and David F. Kramer explored the darkness from the point of view of the monster, tracking the creatures from folklore and myth, through urban legend and into pop culture.

This companion book takes the other view by examining who (and sometimes what) stood against the coming of the darkness, who defended the helpless against the night predators, and who chased away the ghosts and exorcised the demons. We’re talking about the good guys, the heroes, the vampire hunters, exorcists, ghost hunters, priests, witch doctors, and other often unsung heroes in the never-ending battle between good and the darkest evil.

Grab a stake, polish your crucifix, load your pistol with silver bullets, and let’s go hunting.

2

HEROES AND VILLAINS

Scott Grimando, Dragon Slayer

"The Dragon Slayer was done for an Epic Poem I wrote for my book, The Art of the Mythical Woman, Lucid Dreams. The Hero sets out to prove her worth in battle donning the armor of her father who had no sons. Even the dragon underestimated her quickness and agility."—Scott Grimando is an illustrator and conceptual artist.

HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

We’ve always had heroes and villains. In the earliest days the hero was the caveman who throttled something and dragged it home for dinner. The villain was the brute in the next cave who throttled the hunter and stole the intended dinner.

From another view, the hero is God and the villain is the devil, and everyone who came afterward and embraced light or darkness are wannabes. To the ancient Greeks a hero was a kind of demigod, a half-breed offspring of a human and a god who was born with special powers or knowledge and who often had the support of a god. That’s not how we use the word today. By modern popular definition a hero is a person who shows courage when faced with a problem. This could be someone showing poise and determination during a fight against cancer or a soldier on a battlefield running to rescue a wounded comrade. Firemen entering a burning building are heroes. So are cops. A lot of people are heroic at different times in their lives, some more visibly than others. There is big, dramatic heroism and small, quiet heroism.

In storytelling, heroes tend to be a bit larger than life. They are the ones who stand up to threats that other people cannot face. Heroes slay dragons or hold a bridge against a horde of foes. Because of stories we tend to think of heroes as having big muscles, square jaws, and a will of iron.

But that’s a skewed view of heroism. If you’re big and tough, well trained and resourceful, then fighting the enemy is not that much of a stretch. If you’re small and weak and have no special training, standing up to danger is viewed as a much grander undertaking. This is, of course, an absurd view, because a few ounces of lead in a sniper’s bullet can plow through a muscular chest as easily as that of a ninety-pound weakling. Heroism is relative; it’s based on the individual’s emotional and psychological makeup—more so than on physical attributes.

The media tends to warp the word, using it for all the wrong reasons. They call sports stars heroes, confusing the word with idols. Hitting a home run may make fans adore you, but it isn’t heroism. Running into a burning house to rescue someone is heroism. So is standing up for a friend who is being bullied. Or saying no in the face of threat and intimidation.

Chris Kuchta, Evil Dead

"In Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness, the conflict between Ash and the Deadites is one of the most iconic examples of good vs. evil / hero vs. villain. It resonates with viewers in both a visceral and epic way, by showing the resolve and determination of the hero, overcoming the forces of evil by severing it at its head. The chainsaw representing the sword and the Deadite representing the classic dragon shows undertones of the classic hero’s journey, but accomplished in a contemporary world. Like Perseus and Medusa or Beowulf and Grendel it will never get outdated."—Chris Kuchta is an illustrator and art instructor at the Kuchta Academy of Fine Art and Illustration. He has done work on films such as House of the Wolfman and for Blood Lust Magazine.

Heroes are also defined by measuring what they do against what they stand to lose. A mother who stands between her children and a rabid dog is a hero. If she fails, she might lose her life and more critically (to her) the lives of her children. If that same person was faced with the rabid dog when no helpless children are involved, the same situation might end differently. She might lose more easily; she might not find the inner reserve necessary to rise to the demands of the moment.

But we know that the extraordinary can happen. It has happened.

Heroism is also situational, and this is one of the really weird and inexplicable aspects of modern-day humans. On any given street in any big city in the world, most people not only pass one another by without acknowledgment, but they will growl, snarl, and snap if one of the other pedestrians intrudes into the bubble of their personal space to ask the time, directions, or the generosity of a quarter. And yet, let a terrorist’s bomb go off, those same people will often risk life and limb to rescue injured strangers from burning debris.

Many people go their whole lives without ever encountering the kind of circumstances that will allow them to access their inner hero. Some hear the call of the moment and fail through fear, unshakable insecurity, cowardice, or some social bias that makes them withhold rather than reach out. And yet there are those people who are called by the moment, perhaps by the voice of destiny, to step up and show their mettle. Myth, history, and fiction are filled with the everyman who becomes the hero, or the green youth who discovers in his heart an iron resolve. Circumstance can make or break.

The HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) showcased this beautifully, presenting a variety of characters who, under the intense and varied pressure of combat, discover weakness or strength. That series is probably one of the most accurate, poignant, and powerful presentations of ordinary heroes.

In world myth, the hero’s journey—eloquently described by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces—is built around this process of discovery. Also known as a monomyth, this is a common story form in which the hero-to-be begins in the ordinary world and is drawn into an adventure, experience, or journey during which he faces a series of challenges, tasks, and trials. Sometimes he faces these alone (Indiana Jones, Spider-Man); sometimes he has companions (Luke Skywalker, Dorothy Gale). The process of facing and dealing with each challenge expands the hero’s mind, deepens his understanding of the world, and makes him stronger. Ultimately the hero must face a major challenge, a make-or-break moment that often has a lot riding on it: the hero’s life, the lives of others, perhaps a kingdom, maybe even the fate of the world. The bigger the stakes the more drama in the story.

Some people, in life and in myth, are born to be heroes, and their journey is all about discovering and then embracing their destiny. These characters often have some special gift or ability that gives them an edge so that when they face their challenges they can draw on this inner resource and win the day. That’s the case with Hercules, King Arthur, Wolverine, and Leelu from The Fifth Element (1997). These heroes are often willing to fill that role.

Unwilling heroes may also possess gifts or be chosen by destiny to rise in a time of crisis. Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were unwilling heroes. So was Harry Potter. There is usually a moment, however, when they man up and do what has to be done.

There are also antiheroes—people who seem unsuited for the role, often because of attitude issues or personality problems such as cowardice or self-absorption, but who nevertheless find that inner spark when the chips are down. Han Solo is a great example. At the end of the second act of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) he was ready to take his reward and bug out, but a pesky conscience brought him back into the fight, and in the nick of time.

More tragic antiheroes are those who resist the call of heroism, or are even villains for a while, but who rise to the moment, often at their own expense. Annakin Skywalker’s heroism surfaced in the last few minutes of Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi (1983), and—sadly—he died. Antiheroes often have a short life span once they’ve reclaimed their better nature.

A switch on the antihero is the kind who is viewed as a hero only by one side in a conflict. Certainly Joan of Arc was viewed as a heroine by the French people, but the English burned her as a witch. Hans-Ulrich Rudel was the most highly decorated Stuka dive-bomber pilot of World War II, and the only person to be awarded the