The Dark Knight Character Analysis

In one iconic and powerful exchange in the movie The Dark Knight, Two-Face, a heroic district attorney turned villain said to one of the protagonists, Jim Gordon, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” This quote eloquently describes the ideology of characters who are neither a hero nor truly a villain, but fall somewhere between. For many, morally grey characters are fascinatingly terrifying since their actions are understandable, but also condemnable. Often, morally grey character have good intentions but have extreme viewpoints or methods that go too far and disregard collateral damage. This type of character is developed in both the fantasy novel Vicious by V.E. Schwab and the fantasy novel The Song

After the experiment that ending up giving Victor his powers was successful, he accidently killed his friend and Eli’s girlfriend, Angie, but in the process he had managed to make a scientific breakthrough that could give people the power to do extraordinary things that would have been impossible otherwise. To Victor and Eli, at that point in time, his successful experiment was more important. In the text, its says, “‘Angie’s dead…..I had an idea and it worked and--.’ Eli clearly understood, because he stayed quiet….Eli seemed more interested in his experiment than in Angie...Victor looked down at the body then, expecting to feel some shade of guilt, but there was nothing….” (Schwab 119) This demonstrates how Victor had good intentions when he began experimenting, but clearly crossed the fuzzy moral line of that situation, resulting in his temporary death and an innocent woman’s permanent one. Yet, Victor felt no guilt. His actions were about himself, his success, and his safety only. In this situation, it was later Eli who called 911 and attempted to do the morally correct thing, portraying Victor as the true villain in the story. Yet later in the story, this perspective is altered by the development of both character’s methods

The Song of Achilles tells the story of a Greek hero, Achilles, whose name can easily be recognized as one of the great heroes of the mythical and legendary Trojan War. Yet a completely different picture is painted in Madeline Miller’s version of the story. While Achilles started out as the same familiar hero, Miller’s version was eventually overcome by the allure of fame and glory which were so important to the Greeks. Every action Achilles took was for to protect his own honor and glory, regardless of those being slaughtered around him as the war continued onwards. After the leader of the army made a foolish decision that leads to a disagreement with Achilles, Achilles and his army left the battle, and did not return even after the men beg, or after a women was raped, or even after the scales were tipped away from their favor through a deal Achilles’ goddess mother made with Zeus, king of the gods. After all these decisions, while watching the slaughter, it says in the novel, “This is the moment that Achilles and his mother have summoned: the Greeks, routed and desperate, without him. But when will it be enough?.... ‘They should hate Agamemnon. It is his pride that kills them.’ And yours.” (Miller 316) This conveys how while Achilles was driven by honor, and his initial disagreement had stemmed