Signet Essay Contest Winner 2015: Hudson Cleveland

Large, overarching brushstrokes are one of the most typical displays of character used by antiheroes. Whether it be some strange, indirect scheme to save the world, or a sweeping idea of utilitarianism they use in their day-to-day lives, antiheroes hold incredibly unconventional perspectives on life, perspectives which may end up being disliked by the vast majority of the general population, who must suffer under their atypical ideology. Henry Higgins, the leading role in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, is an extremely archetypal antihero. While his mannerisms verge almost on the sociopathic, one cannot help but feel an underlying attraction to his odd ideas and antisocial views. In these sardonically unorthodox ways one can see the truthfulness of his being, bringing the antiheroism of the man at the forefront of the play.

Antiheroes generally come in two packages: a hero who “saves the day,” using means that may entail mass-sacrifice — such as Ozymandias from Watchmen or even the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japan in WWII — or an irregular individual with a consistently applied set of ideals, such as Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. Henry Higgins falls into the latter category, with his invective style of dealing with everyone and everything driving people away from him at a swift rate, evidenced by his own mother asking him to leave her be on her “at-home day,” as well as assuming a fatigued demeanor whenever near her son otherwise. Typical of the antihero style Higgins embodies, he ignores any objections to the ways he acts and angrily declines any and all suggestions to change his approach towards life. Higgins, though rough, handles the “hero” part of the antihero through this brute honesty, as this is the only way for anyone to enjoy his presence, whether that person is another character in the play or a reader of the play. He makes no mistake in describing specifically what he likes and dislikes in individuals or society as a whole, no matter how crude or offending it may be to others, and does not discriminate in whom he tells it to, lending his derisive words to Eliza, Pickering, his housekeeper and his mother all alike. Higgins himself notes this commentarial fairness, after Eliza finally snaps at him: “The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manners for all human souls” (Shaw 83). This statement encapsulates what it means to be an antihero of the Higgins variety, someone holding true to his beliefs, even when no one else agrees. These beliefs are of antiheroic quality as well, showcasing a disdain and disregard for the individual’s emotions and societal norms (resulting usually in returned disdain and disregard from those around him), instead embracing a wide-lens concept of practicality and seizing it dogmatically.

Higgins’ staunch egotism prompts him into a peculiar inertia of the physical and the psychological. Many heroes are made to go on long journeys or quests on which they will encounter great resistance in order to arrive at the end a person changed for the better. Henry Higgins shuns this idea, barely undergoing any development and going on no journey, literal or figurative, save for the disciplining of Eliza, which itself started off as a mere bet between him and Pickering. Instead, Higgins acts as a harsh Mr. Miyagi, sending Eliza on a quest to fulfill his own desires by association. By the end of the play, Eliza has changed because of people’s reactions to her physical change, seeing that it was possible to be treated differently than a mere, impoverished flower girl. Henry Higgins, on the other hand, is the same caustic, unrelentingly insincere man he was from the beginning. In this he has overcome no obstacles, has not been put into a decision between Scylla and Charybdis, and has essentially only gone through the rigors of guiding someone through strange and unfamiliar waters, that person being Eliza.

While Higgins can be disliked, as an antihero can be, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why we still like him. His motto is truth and his exploits, though often uncivil, are fair even when impulsive. This is the ultimate notion of the antihero: one who, even when being despised, is so easily liked. His uncompromising honesty cannot be ignored, making it easy to laugh at him and laugh with him, and easier still to agree with him even when his methodology appears brash and cynical.

An antihero is liked even when all of his characteristics add up to an individual to be universally disliked and hated, one who sticks to his guns even when the world says the opposite of what he feels, one who eschews movement in favor of the sanctity of his comfort zone. Henry Higgins epitomizes the role of the antihero. His own constituents and peers are constantly caught in the middle, wondering whether to love or hate the man; his opinion of the world remains set in stone from the beginning of the story to the end, and his brilliance persistently conflicts with his brazen idiosyncrasies. In the end, an antihero is a person who is easily disliked but who fundamentally must be liked, and Henry Higgins, the antisocial cynic of Pygmalion, is a man perfectly suited to such an description.