The Virtue of the Tempted Hero Asserts Itself

THERE is still another story type which deals with heroes
gone astray, and its protagonist is essentially the same goodbad
fellow we '
ve seen coming to his sad and poignant end.
This new chap, though, manages to do very well for himself.
Although he had broken the law, at the close he gets
the girl, the respectable job, public recognition, or whatever
he was after-in fact, whatever happens to be lying
around for his gratification.
How come? The trick is done by putting the questionable
behavior outside the framework of the story. Relegating
to a time preceding the action of the story those sins
which the writer does not wish a character to pay for is a
device used at times in every fiction-form where certain
rules of justice prevail.
The other aspect of the story which allows a good-bad
hero to come out on top is the pre-occupation of this storyform
with the hero's regeneration rather than merely with
his preparations for regeneration. But, even though the
story deals primarily with the moral improvement of the
hero, there are sins in his past, and they must be accounted
for. The method of penance is a strange one, but effective.
This good-bad hero who is reforming is making the change
because his unethical activities have troubled him. Even
if he has gained, say, wealth through his wrongdoing, the
subsequent guilt he experienced has more than compensated
for the pleasure of his gain. Thus, when we meet
him, the score is evened-quite a different situation from
the case of the gay cavalier who has broken the law and
loved doing it.
In this respect, the tempted hero who makes a change
for the better has an entirely different approach to crime.
He has never wholeheartedly given himself over to it. He
has always acted with moral reservations. This, in addition
to the ambiguous nature of his wrongdoing, some mitigating
circumstances attending his original participation, and
the relegation of the activity to a time preceding the story
action, allows the writer to treat this hero very generously.
Here is an example.
The hero is a jockey for a sharpy racetrack crook who
currently owns only one horse. The jockey and the owner
have been down on their luck lately. Their underhanded
schemes-pulled off at small tracks to make quick killings-
have been failing miserably. But the owner comes up with a
new one. He has learned that a horsey, tally-ho set in the
vicinity is planning to stage a hunting race-on which there
is bound to be heavy, gentlemanly betting.
On credit, the owner purchases from a local dealer an aged
hunting horse. The owner then approaches the manager of
the stable under whose auspices the race is to be run and
requests permission to enter this purchased horse. He has his
jockey show the horse off by running it over the hunting
course, so that the members of the stable will see that it is a
third-rate nag. The owner's plan is to switch the nag for his
one good horse which he will dry-paint to resemble the nag.
He will then bet heavily on the outcome of the race and
clean up.
It happens that the proprietor of the stable is a young
woman who has inherited the stable from her father. She
loves horses and hunting and has little use for people who
make money through devious abuse of horses. The jockeyhero,
during the negotiations for entering the nag in the
hunting race, meets the girl and is immediately attracted to
her. She, too, is attracted to him, but takes a strong dislike to
the owner who she suspects is eager to make a fast buck. She
forthrightly tells the jockey that she despises anyone who
defiles the sport by cheating. This admonition, combined with
his own distaste for all the below-board doings of his boss,
makes the hero resolve to see that the race is run honestly.
Before the hunt, the boss switches horses as planned. But
the jockey then reswitches them, is detected doing so by the
girl, and tells her all. The jockey runs the race on the nag,
makes a fine showing, but loses the race. The horsey crowd
learns of the jockey's desire to keep them from being fleeced
and accepts him socially. The owner flies the coop, welshing
on his bets. And the jockey, at the close, is about to marry
the stable proprietor. The two of them will run her stable
as man and wife.
We saw in detail the dangers and difficulties attending
stories about the purely bad protagonists and the good-bad
heroes who must pay for their transgressions. In distinction
to both these types, the piece which handles the regenera -
tion of an erring hero is entirely safe. The story is, of
course, didactic with a vengeance. Vice is shown to be
unrewarding, both spiritually and materially, whereas the
old straight and narrow proves to be strewn with compensation-
amatorial, psychological, and material.
Virtue, in this story type as in most, is never its own
reward. Slick moralizing, in this respect, is usually carried
on, on a rather elemental, childish level. There rarely
can be anything subtle about the good things of this life
for the slick writer. The reason for this is simple enough:
intangible, airy satisfactions would be valid only with a
section of any possible slick audience. Tangible returns,
though, are acceptable to almost everyone. Consequently,
the writer must deal handsomely with any hero who has
made the break. The beautifully pat wind-up of Elizabethan
comic dramas might serve as object lessons for writers
attempting any slick fiction. And although he can't
pu11 a strange bag of gold from a hole in a tree to hand
to the hero at the close, the slick writer, with a little care,
can always plant such a bag there quietly at the story's start
to be discovered by the hero in the last paragraph.
category:plot lines
Category: transformation.