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I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not go fast; for I intend to go in harm's way. — John Paul Jones
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence Of my old father, nor return of love, That should have crown'd Penelope with joy, Could overcome in me the zeal I had T' explore the world, and search the ways of life, Man's evil and his virtue. — Ulysses in Dante's Inferno
Sometimes The Hero doesn't get a Happy Ending because no ending could conceivably be happy. It would mean the end of the adventures, and nothing could be more dull than the lack of the adrenaline. He's not really alive out of danger. An adrenaline junkie, often enough.
Sometimes The Hero is depicted as trapped in a dull job or situation, fondly recalling his Glory Days; when a new chance at adventure raises, they invariably jump on it. Sometimes the hero at the beginning already sets out in search of new adventure. Sometimes, in the middle of the story, the hero has a chance to leave, and this is one motive for rejecting it. And sometimes it is an ending trope; the hero resolves not to return to mundane life, And The Adventure Continues. This is the common ending of Adrenaline Makeover.
Some heroes who make a fortune and promptly lose it foolishly may fall under this trope, because it means that they can return to the fun of making money. And sometimes the love of being In Harms Way is merely implied, when the hero never seems to find anything worth stopping for.
This can be an intermittent condition in some heroes; they adventure, get tired of it, settle down, get tired of it, adventure — etc. At other times, it may propel a hero to adventure for years on end before realizing, finally, that he has burned out and wants to settle down.
Characters who enjoy putting themselves In Harms Way include these:
and probably more.
Related to Chronic Hero Syndrome and Chronic Villainy. One of the more reasonable ways to maintain status quo. Many Heroic Fantasy heroes keep going in unending series because they are in love with being In Harms Way. Inverse of Home Sweet Home.
Frequently found with a love of Famed In Story. May overlap with the Glory Hound. See also Glad To Be Alive Sex
Examples
Anime
- In The Castle of Cagliostro, Lupin III and Jigen discover that their careful heist had netted counterfeit money. They laugh it off, Jigen declaring that he didn't want to retire anyway.
- Tenchi Universe ends with all the craziness ended, Tenchi at home safe, and him being bored to have a normal life.
- Of course, Ryoko's reappearance in literally the last minute of the last episode provides Tenchi the promise on being In Harms Way all over again. Albeit, off-camera.
Comic Books
- In DC Comics, former Flash villains Trickster and the Pied Piper joined their old friends the Rogues in an apparent Face Heel Turn. After the Rogues had murdered Bart Allen (the Flash), they talked revealing that it had been an attempted infiltration and they had both done it to get back to adventure.
- Travis Morgan from The Warlord lives and breathes this trope. He passes up the opportunity to settle down peacefully when it is presented to him, because he needs to keep travelling and adventuring.
- One of Morgan's friends became the ruler of some city-state or other ... and was bored. He was delighted when a visit by Morgan coincided with the discovery of a serious plot to overthrow him, saying he'd finally found something that made the job worthwhile: "Enemies!"
- Spider Man, most definitely an adrenaline junky, in addition to being something of a showman since his inception in the wrestling ring. His patter has more energy the more danger he's in. He often goes out to 'clear his head' with the hazardous sport of swinging from skyscrapers.
- When Storm from the X-Men married the Black Panther and became Queen of Wakanda, she could possibly do more good for the planet as a world leader than as a superhero, but finds palace life and politics mind-numbingly boring. As a result, she makes regular trips to California to assist the X-Men.
Film
- Jack Sparrow in the third Pirates Of The Caribbean movie.
- In The Mummy, Rick finds an old pilot who was a hero in his Glory Days, and he jumps at the chance to take them into incredible danger and die doing it (which he does).
- Kirk is in this situation when the first Star Trek movie begins (even more so if you read the novel).
- In Heat, one of McCauley's crew is given the choice to back out of an extremely high-risk job in order to settle with his family, considering he already has a lot of money tucked away from previous heists. The guy declines the advice, claiming that the thrill of the job, not the money in itself, is what he considers the payoff.
Literature
- Ulysses as portrayed by Dante in Inferno
- Conan The Barbarian. He gets a kingdom at the end and finds it deathly dull; it's when people try to violently overthrow him that he gets excited again.
- Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser's endless adventures are also the fruit of a love of it. In one story, they set out in search on the grounds that they are bound to find it.
- Oscar in Glory Road by Robert A Heinlein, a book with this as a major theme. Possibly also Lazarus Long in other books by the same author.
- Another trope that recurs in Warhammer 40000 tie-ins:
- Sandy Mitchell's hero, Ciaphas Cain, is a coward with a great reputation for heroism. He enjoys the advantages of this reputation so much that he has to fake it, including a love of being In Harms Way. This inevitably results in him emerging looking like a big damn hero, which only results in him getting thrown into even worse situations.
- In Dan Abnett's novel Malleus, the rogue trader Maxilla works for Eisenhorn not for the money but the challenge.
- By the same author, in Brothers of the Snake, Priad's squad is disappointed when they are sent to pay respects at a coronation, and Priad must sternly remind them that it is their duty.
- In Lee Lightner's Space Wolf novel Sons of Fenris, Berek thinks that his duties are hard: he can not go down in the fight, which will be glorious.
- In Graham Mc Neill's Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, one of Fulgrim's own men, though thinking his plan vainglorious, admits to a thrill at being back in the fight.
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Blood Pact, after Daur was drawn into one of Rawne's schemes, Elodie points out that he was obviously after the danger.
- In JRR Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, Bilbo's love of adventure returned after much time in settled life.
- E.R.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros contains perhaps the most egregious example. It ends with the triumph of the heroes and the defeat of their noble foes, after a long and ruinous war. The heroes are bored. So the gods bring back their foes that they might fight them. Without, of course, considering all the peasants, soldiers, etc. who suffered in the war.
- In Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times, Cohen and the rest of the Silver Horde love being In Harms Way. It is also subverted near the end, when Cohen hears a long list of Barbarian Heroes who had died — and one who has left it for being a Guardsman, because it was a regular job and had a pension; it makes a deep impression on Cohen.
- Played straight when the Silver Horde return in The Last Hero. After one of them dies choking on a cucumber, they decide to have one last adventure: returning fire to the gods...with interest.
- In Men At Arms, Gaspode receives a place in a cozy little home at the end. At the very end, he escapes to return to life on as a street dog.
- Sam Vimes is often portrayed like this. He's the sort of cop to stop his wedding to chase a thief down. Later books indicate he may be mellowing as his duty shifts to his family, but if he thinks that he'd let down his son by not doing his job, well then....
- Even while leading a Parade in his full Duchal attire he cannot resist chasing a criminal. Twice. And being Discworld the entire parade follows him.
- Andre Norton's book The Time Traders had the U.S. time-travel operation recruit a lot of these sort of people — "the expendable man who lives on action" — who had been "pressured by the peaceful environment into becoming a criminal or a misfit." They were sent back into some very un-peaceful history.
- In Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, after getting his life back, only better Richard seems strangely discontent, finding that he now wants nothing. So he goes back to the dangerous, deadly world of London Below.
- In Rudyard Kipling's The Second Jungle Book, most times, going to drink can be dangerous, and
In good seasons, when water was plentiful, those who came down to drink at the Waingunga—or anywhere else, for that matter—did so at the risk of their lives, and that risk made no small part of the fascination of the night's doings. To move down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred; to wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from behind; to drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a thing that all tall-antlered young bucks took a delight in, precisely because they knew that at any moment Bagheera or Shere Khan might leap upon them and bear them down.
- Kipling loved this trope. Many of his better known poems, like "Song of the Dead," consist of little else.
- Rachel Morgan, the protagonist for The Hollows novels, is often described as a adrenaline junkie seeking dangerous situations in order to feel alive. This tendency was greatly reduced when she nearly gets all of her friends and several other people killed as a result.
- In Edgar Rice Burroughs's Gods of Mars, when John Carter meets a fellow prisoner, the young man tells how he happened to fall into this.
I must have inherited from my father a wild lust for adventure,
- In Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno, trying to explain hunting to Sylvie, the narrator starts with the observation that some places men must hunt fierce beasts, and some of them come to like it.
"Well, and so the men—the hunters—get to enjoy it, you know: the running, and the fighting, and the shouting, and the danger."
Live Action TV
- Doctor Who, often; The Doctor has a marvelous attraction to danger spots.
- Mr. Bennet from Heroes does not take well to retirement. (There's only so many crossword puzzles one can do after all) so when another group of Cape Busters comes along he Jumped At The Call and it costs him his marriage.
- Sam Carter from Stargate SG-1 is a subtle example of this. It doesn't come up too often, but she's actually a real adrenaline junkie when off-duty and outside of the lab.
- "Adrenaline junkie" is exactly how the writers have described the entire team of Leverage. Word of God states that they really only got together for the excitement.
Poetry
- The complaint in Rudyard Kipling's "Harp Song of the Dane Women"
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
- Robert E. Howard's "Solomon Kane's Homecoming"
Hands held him hard, but the vagrant gleam in his eyes grew blind and bright,
And Solomon Kane put by the folk and went into the night.
A wild moon rode in the wild white clouds, the waves their white crests showed
When Solomon Kane went forth again, and no man knew his road.
- And "The Road of Kings", originally published as chapter breaks in the Conan story "The Phoenix on the Sword":
What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist's guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs — I was a man before I was a king!
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Too many RPG heroes to count.
- The second game in the No One Lives Forever series was subtitled "A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way", which is a quite clever pun: no only does it show that Cate Archer is on it, fighting H.A.R.M.'s agents again, but also that she just cannot leave the front lines again.
- Arkantos is portrayed this way at the start of the first Age of Mythology game campaign - it starts with him reliving his glorious battles in his dreams and grumping about 'facing feeble pirates'.
- Takahisa Kandori presents a rare villainous example in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. Having achieved his long-sought godhood, Kandori finds it's Lonely At The Top and has to be needled into action against the party.
Western Animation
- In The Incredibles, Bob's dissatisfaction with his life is heavily driven by the dullness next to the adventure of super-heroing.
- Captain N The Game Master was given a chance to return home at the end of the first episode. Hearing his mother's voice through the portal harping on him for not finishing his chores helped his decision to stay.
Real Life
- Pro wrestler Terry Funk. The man has had more retirement matches and retirement tours than I can count, and has yet to actually stay retired.
- Brett Farve.
- This troper imagines that not a few rock megabands who have claimed that their final tour is really "our final tour this time, promise!" must live on this trope. Rolling Stones — I'm looking straight at you...
- The radio show Prairie Home Companion is on its indefinite fair-well tour.
- John Paul Jones, who uttered the quotation at the top of the page, falls under this trope. When the Revolutionary War ended and America wasn't at war enough and wouldn't promote him, he served as an Admiral for the Mexican and Russian navies, so he could keep fighting at sea.
- Thomas Cochrane, who upon being thrown out of the Royal Navy after being involved in a financial scam, promptly went to South America and masterminded the creation of several revolutionary navies...after eventually being exonerated by the British government, he then tried to sign up for the Crimean War in his eighties. It should therefore be no surprise that he was the inspiration, via Horatio Hornblower, for Captain Kirk.
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