Psychopath as The Hero

Ok, I know what you are thinking, but anyways.

The Hero of my story is a very rule abiding teenagers. He would pick up trashes in the road, help old people cross the road and something of a model citizen. Yet he does that only because he thinks that's what he is supposed to do. When he gets into fight, he wouldn't hestitate to stab people in the eyes with a pen and whatnots.

Wait what am I writing? Too tired...

...What's the question here, exactly?

If it's 'does this sound good?' then yes, I think it could be interesting. I take a weird pleasure in reading about psychopathic characters, so I'd quite like reading one as the protagonist.

It worked for Christopher Paloni.

BAM!

In seriousness, go for it. That's assuming you've got a good story to run him through.

edited 24th Feb '11 12:06:43 PM by RTaco

Yeah...as you can prettty much see I was pretty tired when I wrote that and I frankly don't have much idea either. :P

I don't recall Eragon being like that.

I recall reading about a similar scenario in real life where kids (who later become adults) can't process tye difference between rules of convention and rules of ethics. They know right from wrong (which is why they aren't legally insane) but don't recognize the moral dimensions of harming another person. They know that killing is wrong, but so is being double parked. I think the example given was that it is wrong speak out of turn in the classroom, and it is also wrong to pull little Suzie's hair, but they don't understand the categorical difference. I might have read that in On Killing.

Don't worry. I'm quite good at functioning on not much sleep (damn you, insomnia!) but I have a very good body-clock-type-thing, so if it's a time at which I feel like I should be asleep because I have been at that time for the last few days, I become both incredibly clumsy and slightly incoherent. And unbelievably, incomprehensibly sarcastic, but that's another story.

What's the plotline of this story?

edited 25th Feb '11 12:48:57 AM by cityofmist

I don't recall Eragon being like that.

You don't recall him strangling a fleeing, unarmed, young soldier to death?

Well, I tried to forget it too. Sadly, my memory's too good.

[Glug glug glug.]

In all fairness, that soldier happened to be under an unbreakable magical oath to inform his superiors of things like this, meaning letting him go would result in a small army being dispatched to kill or capture him, which would necessitate the deaths of many more Punch Clock Villains.

Of course, Paolini, as usual, is VERY bad at articulating the rationalizations for his characters' actions (among other things), and they all come across looking unbelievably stupid, or downright psychopathic.

edited 25th Feb '11 9:51:36 AM by Archereon

I think the word you are looking for is "sociopathic." By the way, does Lack of Empathy equals to psycho/sociopathy?

edited 1st Mar '11 4:06:08 AM by dRoy

Well, lack of empathy is a telltale symptom of psychopathy. To learn more, I would suggest looking up Dr. Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist. It's a 20-point checklist that includes Callousness/Lack Of Empathy as well as things like Glibness/Superficial Charm, Pathological Lying, Shallow Affect, Criminal Versatility, etc.

A character like that (kinda, he's not the textbook example, but he's properly totally cold and emotionless) is the protagonist of Blindsight.

Thanks! Will look it up later.

Wow, I completely forgot about this thread.

I believe a VERY good example is Rorschach, from Watchmen.

If you want him to be a Hero, perhaps he has something that prevents him from going psychocrazy on the good people? Maybe that very idea of "something´s wrong, therefore I kill" leads him to try to stop the worst wrongs first, like drug dealrs, gangsters and such?

Maybe he just enjoys killing other sentient beings in a truly gruesome way, but isn´t stupid at all and realizes that killing child abusers, murderers and such undesirables will probably make the police (depending on the approach you give them) bother him a lot less than killing, for example, the mayor or doctors.

Second personality? Maybe that sounds cliche, but the delivery of a cliche trope can change things around.

This study sounds like what you're talking about.