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Well I am posing a question for all you word wizards out that. I really wish I had the grasp of the English language like some of y'all have. I am a tutor at a prominent university. I am a chemistry tutor but a literature question came up. What is a name for a good guy bad guy story. I along with many other of the English tutors slaved over this thought. We had proposed allegory and other but did not feel that any one of this would suffice. So I decided to pose the question on here. I hope someone can help me.
This bugged me for the past few days because the “Good Guy vs. Bad Guy” or even just “Good vs. Evil” plotline is arguably the most common in all literature and drama…
Is this concept not the heart of tragedy? This word though is too broad and “tragedy” is too often used to describe only the stories that end in misfortune or at least a gross miscarriage of justice, so it feels insufficient. Plus speaking in Aristotelian terms, in a tragedy the protagonist must have a “tragic flaw” which certainly makes all heroes more interesting, but is not absolutely imperative in every good guy narrative
As a one time theater major, the best word that I can come up with is melodrama. I say this because that particular genre relies less on detailed characterization than on familiar/allegorical themes and archetypal characters to entertain and propel the story forward.
This still feels wanting, because melodrama is another loaded word that brings with it images of histrionics, Jacobean sex romps, and bad soap operas… It's difficult to call a folk tale or proverb a melodrama though it does fit into the template.
Outside Existentialist literature and the avant-garde “automatic writing” sort of prose, do we have stories that don't deal with the struggle of good versus evil? Is this not the root of conflict? Now that this thought has entered my brain I'm having trouble coming up with examples of stories that don't deal with good guys and bad guys on some level. Maybe Camus or Sartre…
Anybody else like melodrama?
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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