• Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I would say John is an anti-hero. A good man underneath who genuinely cares for his friends and family but doesn’t know how to live outside of crime. He knows what he wants and he has a goal in life but tragically, he just doesn’t know how to or is incapable of attaining it.

      Arthur is more like an idiot ward of the state who does crime because he doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong. He has no goals, ambitions, or desires. He has no opinion or moral code. He doesn’t want anything and has nothing to work towards. The most humanizing thing about him is his journal, but his entire being amounts to little more than observations of the things around him. He’s like Data from Star Trek, but even Data had a goal, to become more human. Arthur doesn’t give a shit about being human. It’s so… uncompelling.

      • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Interesting. When you really dive into conversations he has with gang members, you do start finding out more about him. He was thrust into the life of crime, manipulated by Dutch for his own ends, and disposed of by him. Dutch tried to turn him into a soulless killing machine, but you find out more about how Arthur sees the world the more you do engage with people.

        Yeah, he is a vessel for the conflict between the bullshit about “living free” that Dutch preaches and the actual evil they do, but he has depth of his own as the story goes on.

        I get it, he does seem to be unthinking, but as an engine for the story, he embodies the conflict. Maybe you see that as being an empty character, I see it as an interesting storytelling device.