Who’s a good guy? Who’s a bad guy? If only this question was as simple as it sounds. No longer can it be easily determined by whether or not the person in question is helping or hindering the princess in a story, like most children do. It seems so easy for them to decide and call out “That’s the bad guy!” But to truly answer this question one must take many different sides and go through a number of steps. In actuality, being a good guy or a bad guy is all relative; no two people can view someone in exactly the same way.
There are many things one must realize while pondering this question. The first is that people have different opinions of what is good or bad. While many people have basic ideas of what they should and shouldn’t do, sometimes there are some factors that get in the way of their judgment. Judgment is a big part of this question; goodness or badness is just a matter of how a person judges another person, and how that person judges good and bad. For example, one factor that may cloud one’s judgment is power. Take Adolf Hitler for example. He was, in most eyes, a terrible person who killed many and did horrible crimes. But, in the eyes of the Nazis, maybe his intentions were good. Maybe they just wanted power, and therefore convinced themselves that he was the good guy. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitler.html). At any rate, this is a prime example of conflicting views of the same person. One’s past experiences can really shape what they believe in as wrong or right later in life. But what a person classifies as wrong or right is not the only thing affecting the decision.
Goodness or badness depends which side you are on. The “good” side is seen as the enemy to the “bad” side, just as the “bad” side also believes that what they are doing is correct and ultimately “good.” Again, with Hitler as an example, we can see obvious sides. There were many, many Nazi’s that thought that Jews truly were terrible people and that they should be killed. They may think that they are doing the world a favor. The Jewish people, on the other hand, believe they are the “good” ones. Most people agreed with this and sided up against Hitler. Holocaust survivor Charlotte Guthmann Opfermann says “I spent my teenage years as a prisoner of the Nazis.”(http://history1900s.about.com/od/theresienstadt/a/opfermann.htm). She was obviously aon a different side than the Nazis. But just because more people are on one side than the other does not make that side right or wrong, good or bad. The example of Hitler is very extreme; some people may be more neutral than Hitler was. For example, some people tell a few lies here and there, which is not a good habit, but are they considered a “bad guy?” Not usually. There are many poerple that can be described simply as being average. In movies, it is easy to see who is a bad guy because they are powerful, important people. In real life, there are more “average” people than powerful or well known people. These people are never really thought about as good or bad. The goodness or badness of something, as you can see, is very dependent on the level or size of a person’s actions.
As another example of the good/bad scenario, one could look at Vikings(http://www.crystalinks.com/vikings.html). Lots of people, even today, picture Vikings as crazy barbarians who raided villages and killed lots of people. But did the Vikings see their actions as bad? Definitely not. This is what they did to survive. They lived in a place that was hard to prosper in, and it was a tough life. They then developed a “fear-factor”, which gave them power to raid more and more villages. They lived off of the hard work and riches of other villages or civilizations. Obviously, no one wants to have their belongings stolen, so they saw the Vikings as bad guys. This is just simply another example of opposing viewpoints, and could be argued strongly for each side.
The question “who is a good guy and who is a bad guy” is not really a question that has one definite answer. There are infinite possibilities, as being a good guy or a bad guy is completely based on each person’s thoughts and opinions.
Sources:
"Interview with a Survivor -- Charlotte Guthmann Opfermann." 20th Century History. Web. 20 Mar. 2010. http://history1900s.about.com/od/theresienstadt/a/opfermann.htm.
"Adolf Hitler." Jewish Virtual Library - Homepage. Web. 20 Mar. 2010. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitler.html.
"Vikings - Crystalinks." Crystalinks Metaphysical and Science Website. Web. 25 Mar. 2010
Photographs from:
Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia, 30 Nov. 2008. Web. 19 Mar. 2010. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hitler_as_young_man.jpg.
Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia, 09 Apr. 2005. Web. 19 Mar. 2010. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Villianc.jpg.
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