The Hero and the Outlaw

Excerpt-Margaret Mark and Carol S Pearson

The Outlaw

Motto: “Rules are meant to be broken.”

THE VILLAIN IN THE MELODRAMA curls his mustache and smiles, and young girls are caught between dread and attraction. The siren sings and the sailor is lured to his death.

The Outlaw has the enticement of forbidden fruit. Recently, at a conference, Carol Pearson attended a workshop on “Being the Outlaw or Dating One.” There was standing room only! It seems that the more well-behaved and responsible we are, the more we yearn to be an Outlaw, at least a little bit, some of the time.

Certainly, we see the Outlaw in its most positive form in figures like Robin Hood or Zorro. Finding their identity outside the current social structure, such Outlaws are faithful to deeper, truer values than the prevailing ones. Such Outlaws are romantic figures, ready to disrupt a society that has succumbed to tyranny, repression, conformity, or cynicism. In modern history, we can think of the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in China and the participants in the civil rights and antiwar movements in the United States—they are some of the revolutionaries who changed the world to the one we know today.

Of course, we also see the Outlaws who lack such principles—who are just alienated, angry, and willing to victimize others to get what they want. People who give up on getting what they want in a healthy and socially acceptable way may turn to illegal or unethical strategies in order to prevail. They may not feel moral, but they at least feel powerful. While the Hero wants to be admired, the Outlaw is satisfied to be feared. At least, fear implies power of some sort. The styles differ. Each in his or her own way, a mobster, a revolutionary, a skinhead, and an adolescent with numerous tattoos or body piercing may feel powerful making others scared or uncomfortable.