Out of villains we worship heroes: So who's the real hero?

We learn better things from villains, because of villains and through villains.


Have we ever wondered if our childhood favorites like Superman or Spongebob or Avatar didn't endure enemies like the criminal Lex Luthor or the evil Zuko or the unfriendly Squidward, would we even idolize them? If such villains didn't stand up for what they selfishly believed, our heroes would be nothing but show-off, extraordinary people possessing useless in-born powers. I believe from villains--even from problems and conflicts--we find our own heroes.

To be appropriately dressed for the recent occasion, I studied and reread about Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Charles Dicken's epic A Christmas Carol. I thought about the irony of grumpy Grinch and cold-hearted Ebenzer Scrooge portrayed to be the spotlight for both stories. It's true, nevertheless--I believe villains are way beyond what heroes could ever be.

THE GRINCH


One can really blame Dr. Seuss for making the Grinch's heart "two sizes small", making the latter all grouchy and isolated and evil. But then we all know the story is not mainly about his wicked attitude and his insane plans of robbing the Who's Christmas paraphernalia.

Mainly it was about his redemption to descend from his 10 000-feet-high cavern and be not cold-hearted anymore, and about his conclusion that Christmas--and the happiness of having Christmas--is not defined by material things, but by pure love, acceptance and the act of giving whole-heartedly.


Dr. Seuss could've made the Who family the main characters. But he didn't. A sweet hug from a child, a thoughtful greeting from a stranger and a warm welcome can be easily portrayed by rather human-looking protagonists with powerful or humbler characters. But instead, Dr. Seuss made us learn something real from an ill-tempered, green-painted but motivated creature named the Grinch.

EBENZER SCROOGE


Charles Dickens was equally smart. His character was worse off and more serious, though. In his A Christmas Carol, Ebenzer Scrooge despised Christmas, loathed poor people saying the world's better off without them, strictly kept to himself and developed to be a workaholic.


And for rational reasons. Apparently disastrous tidings always came during the holiday season: his father left him in a boarding school as a child; his fiancée Belle left him for a less-workaholic man, and his closest relative and sister Fran died. These just made him more anti-sociable and apathetic to all the people in the world.


But then good fortune of Past, Present and Yet to Come spirits guided him and showed him the consequences of his grumpy actions. In the end, he decided to change, repented and finally knew "how to keep Christmas well".


And this might just be the biggest lesson for us: the power of change. We might never know anything about it if there aren't villains.

Through villains, we exclusively learn and understand more. We consider our bad-tempered teachers our worst enemies, but then we learn to be highly motivated to do what they said we cannot and prove to them what we got. 


We loathe criminals, killers, wayward children and the delinquent. But if we're open-minded enough we learn they've become who they are because of the Nature vs. Nurture phenomenon, and we can later conclude it was not their fault.


Russell Crowe once said: “I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person -- they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.”


Heroes are made out of villains. If there are no villains, there are no heroes. We just might never know how much we could learn from them.