In order to convey a message author sometimes breaks away from the traditional way of portraying a protagonist. They do this to maybe go against other books written within the same genre or to make them stand out. Some books that have exhibited this characteristic are; Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and the fairy tale The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. In each of these stories, the author creates a protagonist that goes against the norms of the genre. The protagonist is defined as the hero or the good guy a story. Each genre often portrays the protagonist in a similar way. This essay will analyze these three books looking at why they break form.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut breaks from the typical protagonist in a military fiction book. This book follows a soldier through
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The Creature sets out ruining Victor’s life by killing everyone he loves. After the creature achieves this Victor sets out to kill the Creature and he ultimately fails to do so. In this novel, Victor shows some qualities of a traditional romantic hero but he also shows characteristics of a Byronic hero. Because he possesses several flaws it is sometimes are to classify what Victor actually is. Victor is very arrogant and wants to play this God-like role. On page 55 he says, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source.” Even though this bold goal would make him a romantic hero the desire to be praised and how he wants the creatures to view him is what goes against the traditional hero. Shelley did this because there was no real definition of a Romantic hero. Also, some of Victor’s traits and characteristics could connect him to being like Satan. Influence of that could have been drawn from Dante who focused a lot on Satan. This could have been Shelley’s way of defining what a Romantic hero was in her