An 

antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero)[1] or antiheroine is a main character in a story who

lacks conventional heroic qualities and attributes such as idealism, courage, and morality.[1][2][3][4]
[5]
 Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that are morally correct, it is not always for
the right reasons, often acting primarily out of self-interest or in ways that defy conventional ethical
codes.[6]

History[edit]

U.S. writer Jack Kerouac and other figures of the "Beat Generation" created reflective, critical protagonists who
influenced the antiheroes of many later works

An early antihero is Homer's Thersites.[7]:197–198 The concept has also been identified in classical Greek

drama,[8] Roman satire, and Renaissance literature[7]:197–198 such as Don Quixote[8][9] and
the picaresque rogue.[10]
The term antihero was first used as early as 1714,[5] emerging in works such as Rameau's Nephew in
the 18th century,[7]:199–200 and is also used more broadly to cover Byronic heroes as well, created by
the English poet Lord Byron.[11]
Literary Romanticism in the 19th century helped popularize new forms of the antihero,[12][13] such as
the Gothic double.[14] The antihero eventually became an established form of social criticism, a
phenomenon often associated with the unnamed protagonist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from
Underground.[7]:201–207 The antihero emerged as a foil to the traditional hero archetype, a process
that Northrop Frye called the fictional "center of gravity".[15] This movement indicated a literary change
in heroic ethos from feudal aristocrat to urban democrat, as was the shift from epic to ironic
narratives.[15]
Huckleberry Finn (1884) has been called "the first antihero in the American nursery".[16] Charlotte
Mullen of Somerville and Ross' The Real Charlotte (1894) has been described as an antiheroine.[17][18]
[19]

The antihero became prominent in early 20th century existentialist works such as Franz Kafka's The
Metamorphosis (1915),[20] Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée (1938) (French for 'Nausea'),[21] and Albert
Camus' L'Étranger (1942) (French for 'The Stranger').[22] The protagonist in these works is an
indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by ennui, angst, and alienation.
[23][ISBN  missing]
The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s as an alienated
figure, unable to communicate.[24]:294–295 The American antihero of the 1950s and 1960s was typically
more proactive than his French counterpart.[25]:18 The British version of the antihero emerged in the
works of the "angry young men" of the 1950s.[8][26] The collective protests of Sixties
counterculture saw the solitary antihero gradually eclipsed from fictional prominence,[25]:1 though not
without subsequent revivals in literary and cinematic form.[24]:295