Spawn: a Byronic Hero - Essay Example

Spawn: A Byronic Hero The Byronic hero is a prototype of a literary hero popularized by the Romantic poet Lord Byron in his works. Starting from the long poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage published in 1812, the hero of which was identified with the poet himself, the Byronic hero prototype became more pronounced in his subsequent works like the dramatic poem Manfred in 1817 and the adventure poem Don Juan in 1891 (Carter, McRae & Bradbury 221). The Byronic hero is a highly individualistic figure – neither good nor purely evil but both, not unlike the rebellious and outcast nature of Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost. The historian and essayist Thomas Babington Macaulay said it best when he described the Byronic hero as “A man proud, moody cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in his revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection” (qtd Breen 155). This dark, highly mysterious gloomy hero can be found in the works of many romantic writers like Edward Rochester of the Jane Eyre novel by Charlotte Bronte in 1847 and Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights written by Charlotte’s sister Emily Bronte, also in 1847, and; Erik of the Phantom of the Opera, a 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux. Today, the Byronic hero continues to show up in many literary genres like the novel, short story, movie and even the comics. In Anne Rice’s Chronicles of the Vampire, for example, the characters of Louise and Lestat both approximate the qualities and characteristics of the Byronic hero (Hoppenstand & Browne 82). In the comic book genre, the fictional character of Spawn created by Todd McFarlane in 1992 embodies the dark, brooding, mysterious and the combined evil-good nature of the Byronic character. Spawn: The Plot The plot of the comic story of Spawn revolves around a character named Albert Simmons who was once a decorated officer of the United States Marines and eventually also became a decorated US Secret Service. His act of saving the US president in an assassination attempt paved the way for his promotion as a Central Intelligence agent specifically in a high-level task force called US Security Group. However, Simmons was in a constant conflict with his boss with respect to operational strategies used by the group, believing that they unnecessarily involve innocent civilian lives. The conflict eventually came to a head and Simmons resigned and went home to his wife whom he beat out of his frustration and rage, an act which would later come to haunt him. Fig. 1 Spawn His boss sent out an assassination order to end Simmons’ life. Upon his death, Simmons was sent to hell but he bargained with the devil to make him live as a hellspawn so that he could see his wife one more time. Malebolgia, the devil, accepted the deal and sent Simmons resurrected back to earth as Spawn, with most of the memories of his previous life gone and his body badly deformed yet animated and gifted with boundless magical powers. He also comes back with a chaperone, the Clown, who monitors his activities on earth. He remembers his wife eventually and uses his magical powers to shift shape although he was not able to completely restore to his previous body and found out that she had remarried. Spawn battled both Heaven and Hell in his struggle to free himself from the devil’s control and restore his humanity. He is both hero and anti-hero, battling both emissaries from both spheres while he helped the world get rid of criminal elements. Spawn: A Byronic Hero Spawn is a modern-day Byronic hero. As a vampire-like creature who also acts as a superhero, he is a sinister, dark, cynical figure but a superhero that saves mankind from the criminal elements both human and supernatural. He embodies Macaulay’s Byronic hero definition. As a living dead, Spawn is not exactly human although he can shift shape to a human form. This supernatural quality makes him a mystery and an alien to the human race but because he saves lives, humans see him as a hero despite the fact that he keeps his distance from them. His being tied to Hell in some way makes him a doomed character, powerful yet constantly in struggle with internal and external conflicts. His ties with the devil and his persistent desire to free himself from these ties are not the only reasons why this character is doomed and gloomy. His conscience haunts him forever for past sins he can never forget and can never ask seek atonement for. Shortly before his death, he had a quarrel with his wife and out of rage from his previous confrontation with his boss, was not able to control himself and beat her up. He was subsequently killed and never had the chance to ask forgiveness from her. Herein lays the cause of his deepest guilt and remorse. This was the reason why he made a pact with the devil in the first place to be reborn as an undead. Yet, when he eventually found his wife, he could not completely have the forgiveness he wanted: she has already remarried, and; he cannot morph exactly into the same being he was before his resurrection even with the use of his magical powers. Guilt-ridden and forever remorseful, Spawn lives on as an undead in constant struggle with his inner conflicts which perfectly jibes with the characteristics of a Byronic because “the very foundations of love for the Byronic hero are based on failure and the forgetting of what is possible. The Byronic hero in his purity […] is interminably thrown back upon by black despair; he is unremittingly cast adrift into absence and dark night. […] His gloom will not rest; it stings him into more and more restless roving, ceaseless thinking. His sin is sometimes so primal, or so profound that it merely becomes a cipher, or even unspeakable” (Lutz 54). Spawn, just like the true Byronic hero, is seething with rage for revenge against the people who has caused him his present predicament – his imprisonment in hell as a hellspawn. Yet, despite being vengeful and defiant, Spawn is the hero of the people as he saves the lives of countless citizens by frustrating criminal elements in society. His uncommon and extraordinary condition has set him apart from the rest of humanity. He is the people’s hero but not the typical kind for he is after all, the devil’s own. Spawn, as a Byron hero, is tragic because his person, his face and his condition is unacceptable by humanity. Despite his extraordinary strength and powers he is necessarily alone – forever a tragic figure. His battle not only with Hell but also with Heaven sets him apart from all other heroes. He is not evil yet neither is he good unlike the typical good superhero. He is his own person, an individual that is beyond good and evil. “This is a figure that Byron continually depicted and modified throughout his writing […] there is a sort of classical heroism at work in Byron’s creations, which adds a sense of superhuman power to these figures of evil” (Breen 155) Works Cited Breen, Margaret Sönser. Minding Evil: Explorations of Human Iniquity. Rodopi: 2005. Carter, Ronald & McRae, John & Bradbury, Malcolm. The Routledge History of Literature in English. Routledge: 2001 Hoppenstand, Gary & Browne, Ray Broadus. The Gothic World of Anne Rice. Popular Press: 1996 Lutz, Deborah. The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, And the Nineteenth-century Seduction Narrative. Ohio State University Press: 2006. Read More