Date of Award
Spring 2017
Document Type
Thesis
Department
English
College
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Primary Advisor
Dr. Marlon Dempster
Abstract
The literary antihero is continually increasing in potency, emerging today in its most morally egregious form; thus, while the chasm between the antiheroes’ edifying ethical roots and present state of criminal agency expands rapidly, the threat of the antiheroes’ morally ambiguous plots become mimetically transferential to contemporary American youth. This thesis explores the rise in potency in three literary periods. Outlining one foundational novel for each respective era, through Roland Barthes’ structuralism, reveals, on the one hand, the underlying cultural causalities of aberrant behavior and, on the other hand, each character’s unique mental conditions. In Model A, the tenets of Romanticism will be analyzed in order to explore the expectations of the time; in Model B, Satre’s (and de Beauvoir’s) approach to Existentialism are applied to the Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises; in Model C, Freud’s theory of trauma and the uncanny are examined in light of Dexter Morgan’s childhood trauma in Darkly Dreaming Dexter and the subsequent television series Dexter. The effect that the contemporary antihero’s morally-ambiguous project has upon young adult audiences is discussed using concepts such as cognitive dissonance, moral disengagement, and behavioral mirroring, as well as the research of scholars such as Hans Robert Jauss and Albert Bandura. Ultimately, this thesis contends that the current trend of justifying antiheroes’ amoral actions is harmful to the behavior of contemporary American young adults.
Recommended Citation
Dunlap, Sarah E., "UPPING THE ANTI: TRACING THE LITERARY ANTIHERO FROM ITS EDIFYING ROOTS TO ITS POTENT THREAT UPON THE BEHAVIOR OF AMERICAN YOUTH" (2017). Selected Honors Theses. 185.
https://firescholars.seu.edu/honors/185