unhero

plural unheroes

1. One who is not a hero; a nonhero.

   The trials of living with an "unhero" are many.

   1998, Biblion: The Bulletin of the New York Public Library

   3 more examples

   On one level of meaning this unhero is clearly a political statement, a protest of the military and governmental authority. But he is not that alone; he is also a statement against all masculine assertion as this has been traditionally understood. The unhero nevertheless has his unheroine mate.

   1978, Partisan Review, volume 45, page 505

   Comic unheroes are brilliant in practice, tragic heroes only in theory, and their theory lets them down, especially in its conception of their own importance. The comic unheroes know that nobody is important to the world, which is why they won't die for it, and why they play the nobody, getting out of harm's way.

   1991, Artforum International, volume 29, page 95

   C, in “One of the Best (Because I Worked so Hard on This)” engages readers in understanding relationships among comic book “unheroes” and how often “unheroes” relate to children “caught up in the system.”

   2018, They’re Called the “Throwaways”, page 34

2. A hero who does not fit the archetype of a hero; an antihero.

   Not only dead, this poem's contemptible unhero is deadening as well.

   1976, Gary Lane, I Am: A Study of E. E. Cummings' Poems, page 79

   2 more examples

   Everyone in the story is absolutely outside time, everything in it is terribly old-fashioned and affected, the "hero" with all of his experiences is infinitely shallow, pompous, and low-standard. He is in principle an "unhero" and everything in the story is in principle deheroized.

   1963, Foreign Press Digest: Soviet Union, page 44

   Hence, Dalmia comes out sounding like a gambler at heart, not unlike the famous Yudhishthira, the 'unhero' of the Mahabharata.

   2015, Thomas A Timberg, The Marwaris: From Jagat Seth to the Birlas