Victims As Heroes

Heroes tend to get the short end of the stick. To drive the plot, so often the villain gets a head start, and their goal in the narrative is usually to make the hero’s lives miserable.

Just take a look at the early Disney movies. Snow White, Cinderella, Dumbo, Bambi… Even according to Mayerson On Animation, the more active the protagonist, the less money Disney made in the box office. The conclusion this blogger made was that characters need to be either helpless victims or entirely altruistic to be sympathetic characters.

Well, what works for Disney doesn’t work for YA.

Even if it were true, just making a character a victim doesn’t make them sympathetic. I have so many examples that I could use, but I’m going to take the high road and mention Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a victim through and through. His entire life is one big injustice, and the worst of it is that you have to see all of it. Even outside of his life, there seems to be nobody but assholes and injustice on a grand scale. Nothing is fair, nothing is meaningful, and nothing matters. Slaughterhouse-Five may be one of my favorite books, but it’s an absolutely terrible example of a sympathetic character. No one can sympathize with Billy Pilgrim because he does nothing. He’s simply a vehicle with which the story is possible. The story works because in the book, it’s not important that you sympathize with Billy Pilgrim, but the same thing happens in other works of fiction where it’s essential to the story; the victim just becomes a vehicle.

I’d say it’s even more important for YA stories to include sympathetic, active characters than any other genre because of the nature of the audience. Teenagers are inherently reactive, and the lay-down-and-die mentality is openly mocked – ever heard of the emo subculture? It’s openly mocked by about every subculture for essentially being about being a victim. ‘Young people’ as news-sources likes to call anyone age 18-30, have been considered the movers and shakers of so many political movements. These ‘Young People’ set out to do things, and teenagers often think the same way, but because they’re unable to vote feel alienated by the political process, and really most other authority. The government considers them children and unable to decide for themselves, yet they’re still able to be tried as adults for crimes. Because of this, it’s exciting to see something done by somebody their age.

Part of the reason for the need of active protagonists is that teenagers don’t want to be weak and ineffectual, but another has to do with the simple archetype of the Hero’s Journey, common in all works of fiction, but most common in YA and Fantasy. Its appeal is that the hero’s Journey is about somebody growing up. Essential to the hero’s journey is that the character cross from being reactive to being active. There was a shove at the beginning, and then it's the hero’s job to push back all the way not only to stop from being the victim, but also to improve themselves as people. The hero can’t continue to mope or be victimized if they’re going to destroy the evil that put them there in the first place, so it can stop tormenting anyone once and for all. To do this, the hero needs to decide that something has to be done, and that they’re the only one willing and able to do it, so they do it.

A victim is the best way to earn pity and can be good to start of a story, but it can’t continue until the end. It makes the hero weak and unable to cope with their own problems, and that’s something that teenagers, above all other groups, can’t stand. So, don’t follow Disney’s early examples; give us some active heroes.