Comments on: Hero or Criminal?*

By: trevor

trevor — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:45:58 +0000

That’s a welcome complication, particularly if one enjoys the fallacy of {etymology = meaning}. Villains were originally immoral rustics, while I think of crime as being a notion born of cities.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:35:49 +0000

Actually, I like the Hero/Criminal dichotomy: it has grown on me. Though I don’t agree that ‘criminal’ is always the better antonym. In purely pantomimic terms (like when it’s used by the Beach Boys), ‘villain’ does its job well. That said, aren’t villain and criminal more or less synonymous anyway?

By: trevor

trevor — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:10:25 +0000

I’d have thought that “criminal” is both an accepted antonym and, by adding an extra layer of judgement, a more expressive one than “villain”. If Uncle Tom read more genuinely radical literature, he’d know that your dichotomy is right there in his Cabin: “One young man, of whom a missionary has told us, twice re-captured, and suffering shameful stripes for his heroism, had escaped again; and, in a letter which we heard read, tells his friends that he is going back a third time, that he may, at last, bring away his sister. My good sir, is this man a hero or a criminal? Would not you do as much for your sister? And can you blame him?”