In the the book ‘The Nutcracker Men’ a young boy from London is evacuated from to Cliffe (Kent) to move away from fear of Zeppelin in 1914. His father carves toys for a living and joins the army in November 1914. To pass the time, his father carves him wooden soldiers from France but as time goes by they start changing. He sends Johnny, the boy, letters about his experience that come with the soldiers but they begin to go from innocent, smiling cracker men to life-like portraits of a wounded-bleeding soldier taking his final breaths before falling as another hero.
Johnny uses the cracker men to build his own trenches in his Auntie’s backyard, however after causing events in his toy set such as Germans advancing, coincidentally the same events happen on the real front.
I believe Johnny could be considered an anti-hero type of character represented in the book. For reasons such as his innocence in which his innocent play-set of a battlefield in 1914 could also be the real front under his control which leads to the death of many German’s seeing as that’s his objective in the game. He does not realize the consequences of his actions at first, but after things become apparent he does anything to keep his father’s toy-figure in one piece even if it means killing everyone else.
(Don’t know what else to say tbh)
February 1, 2015 at 9:34 pm
This is good Bryan and you’ve made good attempt to explain why you think Johnny is an antihero.
To extend your thinking further – consider how the written style of the book, the setting and the tone also support the notion of an anti-hero genre. Are there any distinctive features that you want to pick up on that you may then be able to explore in relation to other texts?
CW