Nemesis etymology
Nemesis is an anti-hero or antagonist in literary works. It is one of the characters in the book or movie. Typically, this person absorbs all negative qualities or some of them. This is a negative character that does not have any heroic enthusiasm. At the same time, the nemesis often has one of the key roles in the literary work. For example, in the literature of the 19th century, such people were those who dragged a meaningless life, completely deflected under the existing system at that time.
Nemesis definition
It is vital to compare it with the hero who is an opposite kind of the literary character to understand the core of the nemesis. We need to mention that both these types can become the protagonists of the story. Then the idea is how readers perceive characters and their actions.
Nemesis is a type of literary hero, emphasized by deprived heroic, and often, any positive features, but at the same time being the focus of the moral and philosophical problems of the work of art. Its subtype can be related to the villain or evil: it the opposite of the hero and all of his moral principles. In this way, the authors often embody all the dark shades of our world.
A hero is a character that is open to the reader from all positive sides. Honesty, courage, kindness, charity, mutual benefit, achievement of the set goals. To all this, we are taught exactly the positive characters. Often, heroes are created as an object of imitation, and their images of true moralists are too perfect and fabulous.
The idea of the antihero is to focus the reader's attention on the battle between the Good and the Evil. It is interesting to observe how the dramatis personae fight, communicate, even find compromises during this fight. Moreover, the battle can be either real with blood, wars, warriors, swords or philosophical where the fight goes in the emotional level.
Examples of nemesis
Nemesis is not always a person that is humanlike. It can be a spirit, a negative creature, a fantastic animal, or anything else. In cinematography, for instance, vampires are great instances of antiheroes. They are going through another period of transformation. If earlier their presence was accompanied by infernal symbolism and the fear of crucifixion, now the unclean lives in a modern city, practically not differing from the locals.
Mephistopheles is the character of the Faust tragedy by Goethe. He is a demon, an unclean spirit that personifies itself as evil, denying Good and Love, the beginning.
Woland is the character of the novel "Master and Margarita," who heads the world of other powers. Woland is the devil, Satan, "the prince of darkness," "the spirit of evil and the master of the shadows."
Throughout the decades, the picture of nemesis changes and relinquishes. If previously these were weird creatures that are simply objects of the author's imagination, in modern literature such characters are humanlike. The explanation can be quite ordinary: authors see that each person has both negative and positive features. It is impossible to find a person who possesses the virtues only. That is why to make the story more realistic, and touching writers focus only on some traits that are exaggerated but so close to each of us.
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