Who is Desperation's True Hero

[Silhouette86]

Johnny Marinville. David played his part but in the end Johnny did the dirty deed to get the job done. IMO.

[Lilix]

(Sorry, I'm french .)

All you've said is very interesting and I had never imagine that Johnny Marinville could have been the hero. After reading that, I think you're right, even if I also think that David Carver is a central character ! I think there are two heroes : one for the first part of the book, who is D. Carver, and another one for the last part, who is J. Marinville.
What do you think about the two parts theory ?

[Jojo87]

Johnny Marinville was the biggest hero. But I guess David Carver was also a hero when he did what he did.

[Alexandrian]

The characters all end up at one point or another rising up above the challenges they face so they are all heroic in some way. I noticed a theme in Desperation that is similar to the one in The Stand however, that the story unfolds because of a chain of events set off by an imbalance of good and evil in this case, the release of Tak vs. Flagg releasing the super flu in the case of The Stand. The chain of events are all different steps in the characters destinies/fates/Kas that lead to the story's climax, I point out Johnny's "god bomb" as an example. So in the end there really is no real single hero archetype.

[Alexandra19]

I asked my litterature teacher to read Desperation when i was in college (it was a revenge for all the classic novels I had to read back then). When he gave it back to me, he told me he tought the story was very similar to the Book of Job in the Bible, Johnny Marinville playing the Job part. I also had pictured Johnny as the hero but hadn't digged that deep. I couldn't have, anyway, never read the Bible !

[blunthead]

Well, I've already posted to this thread but I'm changing my answer. In Desperation all of the good guys are heroes, as in The Stand, The Regulators, Cell, Duma Key, so on. Marinville gave his life but David wanted to.

[Alexandra19]

The thing is David is good right from the beginning, Marinville is def the one that evolves the most in the story.

[bobledrew]

If you take the traditional definition of a hero in literature, I think you have to say it's Marinville. If you were to buy this definition, Marinville would be an ANTI-hero: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-anti-hero.htm

To me, what makes Marinville the hero is that he changes and develops as a consequence of his trials and tribulations. If he ended the novel the same self-absorbed waste that he began it as, he would not be a hero in the literary sense.

[Andy M]

For me it was David and Johnny Marinville. David because he was good at the start. Johnny make sure David get killed.